


let me see the light in your eyes

by orchid_spiral



Series: age of void [1]
Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Body Horror, Enemies to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, Futuristic, Gorn, Horror, Lots of OC's, M/M, Mind Invasion, Murder, Rape Threats, Sadism, Sci-Fi, Slurs, Suicidal Thoughts, Survival Horror, anaesthetic failure, discussion of suicide and suicide attempts, emotional abuse of a child, graphic depictions of death, irrational jealousy, surgical stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-05 08:31:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 69,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1811974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid_spiral/pseuds/orchid_spiral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a killing machine, a nightmare made real. All they can do is try to survive, and maybe make a little order in the chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. so i can watch it fade as you die

**Author's Note:**

> Thought I'd try writing this one up. It's an idea that turned up in my head and I loved it, so I kept it. No idea when the next chapter will be up, but I will try to keep this going. If I've missed any tags, please tell me so I can correct it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Murphy's Law turns out to be a real pain in the arse.

_There is no such thing as overkill_ , the technician thinks as he looks over at the victim.  
  
He meant subject.  
  
Hard to tell the difference, really. But he's pretty sure that this poor bastard didn't sign up for any of it. Not that he's in any position to judge anyone, as his bosses like to remind him.  
  
He can't see much of the subject from this angle, anyway. They're at opposite ends of the huge room- it's two big rooms, actually, both boring combinations of white tiles and grey concrete, but they’re divided by a steel sliding wall that’s been retracted. The first room is full of equipment and people; the second has only one occupant and nothing else.  
  
The ~~victim~~ subject has been chained to the far wall, completely unconscious, his body in an X position, held there with more thick, heavy chains than the technician thinks is strictly necessary. Then again, he’s not actually in charge of the project, thank God. He’d hate to be responsible for this maniac.  
  
If what they’re doing doesn’t work, it’s going to be a nightmare. If it does… it’ll be even worse.  
  
The technician takes a furtive look at the gunmen: there's six of them, dressed in heavy gear and armed to the teeth. They look like toy soldiers, standing on the line where one room ends and the other begins, waiting for instructions. They keep cautiously looking at the subject, even though said subject has barely moved beyond breathing, even with the chains. He hasn’t even twitched or turned his head.  
  
“Are we ready yet?” a crisp American voice says, and the technician turns. It’s his boss, Dr Salder, who, despite being barely five feet three inches tall with the physique of a sapling, manages to be one of the most intimidating people he’s ever met.  
  
“Don’t know, sir,” one of Salder’s flunkies says.

"Find out," Salder snaps.

The assistant turns to the technician. “Hey, you. Is everything good?”  
  
Sam Duncan nods, trying to sound authoritative in front of Salder and his assistant. “The subject’s unconscious, the snipers are in position, the device is prepared- everything’s fine if you want to proceed, sir.”  
  
Salder nods. “Good.” He turns to another doctor. “Is it done?”  
  
“It’s ready,” the doctor says.  
  
Salder nods again. “Then let’s do it.” His eyes harden as he looks at the subject. “I’ve spent years working on this. It’d better pay off.”  
  
Nobody has the guts to reply.  
  
Duncan isn’t sure of the mechanics behind this operation. He’s a technician, which is a glorified name for ‘gofer who makes sure that the lab is clean and stocked, that everyone’s where they’re meant to be, who cleans up the mess at the end of the day and gets the coffee’. Almost everything he knows about this operation is what he picked up by accidentally overhearing the doctors talking, and he doesn’t understand half of it.  
  
What he does understand is that if this goes wrong, there are three possible outcomes: nothing happens; the subject dies or is otherwise medically compromised; or everyone _else_ dies.  
  
As much as he hates to admit it, from what he’s heard, the third is the most likely option.

No, that's ridiculous. He’s paranoid, that's all. The subject’s restrained, there’s all these things in place to keep him from doing anyone any harm...

…but anything that needs that much restraining is damn scary.  
  
Salder claps his hands for attention, and everyone turns to look at him.  
  
“This operation will commence in five minutes,” he calls. “If you are not directly involved, please leave the room immediately.”  
  
Once the few superfluous people are gone, Salder locks the door behind them. "Best to have no interruptions. Now."

He takes a deep breath, laces his fingers together, and speaks as loudly and clearly as he can manage.  
  
“I must ask all of you to remain quiet as the operation proceeds. If something goes wrong, _do not panic_. The subject cannot escape those chains, and we have the snipers, the wall and the tranquilliser gas prepared in the unlikely event that he does. Remain calm, quiet and unless some emergency occurs, _do not interrupt_. Do you all understand?”  
  
The listeners respond with nods and agreement, and Salder continues. “Will all of you please move to the back wall?”  
  
They do so.  
  
“All right. The operation will now commence. It should take roughly five minutes, and I repeat, please remain calm and do not interrupt.”  
  
Nobody responds, and Salder nods. “Good.”  
  
They all watch him as he walks over to the strange device sitting on the bench. It’s sort of like a glass case, except that it’s not just holding the object inside, it’s… processing it? Modifying it? Duncan has no idea, except that it’s definitely doing something.  
  
Salder types in the passcodes and there’s a loud _click_. He carefully slides the top of the case off, and even more carefully reaches inside and draws out the object.  
  
It looks like a pair of big, thick goggles made of white plastic, at first glance. However, there's no lenses, it's just one piece of thick, opaque white plastic, and it's much bigger than an ordinary pair of goggles. Salder holds it as though it’s more fragile than glass, and carries it carefully past the gunmen and over to the subject. He tilts the man’s head forward and slides it on, positioning it over his eyes. Once he’s satisfied with the placement, he takes out a small device from his pocket and fiddles with it, finally nodding.  
  
“Stay alert, everyone. This is the most crucial part.”  
  
There’s something inside the ‘goggles’, Duncan knows. They’re an artificial gateway, a way to move the creature inside them into the subject through his eyes. An endosymbiont, the doctors called it. Like a parasite, but instead of living off the host, it lives in the host, not necessarily doing any damage. But this one is supposed to help improve the subject, get him into line with their ultimate goal. It's completely artificial, and it can do things that most people can't even dream of. So the end effect is probably going to be worse than all the amazing horror movies that Duncan loves to watch.  
  
And he’s right.  
  
Because there’s one thing that none of them know, that none of the doctors ever realised.  
  
None of them have even the slightest idea that the endosymbiont is sentient. And smart. And rational.  
  
And oh, it is not happy.  
  
  
  
 _The beast wakes._

 _It feels like it's been asleep for millennia. In actuality, this is its first moments of consciousness, but it doesn't know that. Its life before now is a haze that won't clear. What it_  does _know is that it's_ hungry. _It wants blood, wants death, wants to rage and rip and roar and rend. It wants to see the light go out of the eyes of each and everything it kills, wants to hear the screams and smell the blood and gore. It’s_ starving _. It wants to_ kill.

_But first it has to figure out where it is. Then it can find something to eviscerate._

_It turns around and sees that the wall behind it has an enormous, gaping hole in the centre like something smashed through it, but there’s no debris on the ground. Beyond the hole is nothing but a black void, but when the beast cautiously approaches, red mist fills the hole, mist that swirls, thickens and solidifies until the wall is intact again._

_No way out, then._

_The beast turns around and starts walking._

_To the beast, it’s as though it’s padding through a series of enormous halls, looking for something that isn’t the continuous smooth, blank red walls that stretch out in front of it, as far as its eyes can see. Its claws click on the ground as it searches with both its eyes and its nose, until it finds something._

_It’s a black door in the wall, an ordinary door with no markings or signs._

_The beast touches the door with a paw, but nothing happens. The door is closed, and try as it might, the beast can’t open it, no matter how many times it grasps the handle in its teeth and yanks it. Frustrated, it tries to break through, but the door holds-_ _  
_

The subject’s eyes flicker, and he flinches as though someone poked him hard.

“It’s starting,” Salder says quietly. “Everyone, be on guard.” He reaches up, removes the not-goggles and hands them to the flunky who comes up to him. His attention is fixed on the subject, and he doesn't even turn around when the flunky nearly drops the not-goggles as he's carrying them back to their case. Behind him, the gunmen raise their weapons, ready for action.

 

_-and the beast finally gives up. It keeps moving, only to find more doors. None will open, even when it throws itself at one repeatedly-_

The subject flinches and twitches repeatedly, but he remains unconscious, and the snipers focus, their weapons at the ready.

_-and the beast keeps searching, looking for a door that’ll open, when…_

_There._

_It’s a pull, an urge to go somewhere, but the beast has no idea why, or where it’s going. It considers going in a different direction, but the urge grows, until it’s almost like there’s a screaming voice in its mind, telling it to go, go, go_ now _._

_The beast valiantly holds out, but finally it submits. There's only so long it can resist for._

_It takes a rapid left turn and picks up the pace, bounding down the halls as fast as it can manage. It swears that some of the halls reconfigure themselves, like they're trying to keep it away, but it doesn't work. A few more turns and it’s there, that’s the place it’s looking for-_

_-and it’s behind a door._ Fantastic.

_The beast tries the handle half-heartedly, but no luck. Not that it actually expected this door to open._

_Time to use some force, then._

_The beast backs away, shakes its head briskly and takes a run up, slamming itself into the door as hard as it can. It doesn’t hurt, but the door doesn’t move._

_Annoyed, the beast does it again, and again, and after the… tenth? eleventh? time, it’s rewarded by a slight creak._

The subject stiffens, going from twitching to still in a second, and lets out a pained moan. Salder exchanges a worried look with his closest flunky, but they make no move.

_The beast does not relent. With every new assault, the door gives a little less resistance, until finally, the first crack appears. The beast hits the crack repeatedly with all the strength it can muster, and it spreads rapidly. Soon the door is nothing but a heap of debris for it to step over._

The subject lets out a scream, a long, anguished scream of pain, but incredibly, he’s still unconscious. Salder almost shudders at the thought of what could be going on in his head, but all he can do is watch. They've come too far to go back.

  
  
 _Here it is: the very centre of the labyrinth, the end goal. It is a huge circular room, completely empty. Dozens of doors are set in the wall, and the beast has no doubt that they’d be just as hard to get through as the door it’s just come through. It turns, and watches as the door reforms, the new version appearing to be just as strong and intact as any of the others, with no sign of even a tiny crack in its surface._

_No matter, though. The beast’s goal is right there, in the very centre of the room: a column of light that seems to be every colour at once, and yet none of them. The beast watches for a minute, transfixed, and finally plods over to it. Cautiously, it extends a paw, touches the light and recoils as information floods through it: the man’s first word, his favourite food, his best kiss, his most hated enemy, his last memory-_

_His soul._

_The beast knows what it has to do, even though it doesn’t have the faintest idea why. The urge, the voice in its head, that's what's calling the shots now. The beast braces itself, flexes its legs and walks toward the light._

_The beast plunges into the midst of the column and lets out one last shriek. The light is like acid, burning it, melting it, and the pain is both there and not there, agony and numbness. Every drop of the beast's body that falls away blends with the light until there is no beast left- and no man, either. Where there was two, now there is one, one strange new being with two minds. Around them, the room changes, flicks from appearance to appearance as the man's mind is altered._

_What's left of the beast relaxes. It knows it is safe here. It recognises this man as kin, a brother. It saw his memories, and now it knows what he is. Someone just as wild and ravenous as the beast, someone else who loves to fight and maim._

_Someone else who loves blood._

_The man has been drugged so deeply that he can barely react to the beast's intrusion. The responses his mind made were automatic, and he had no idea that they happened. But he_ can _feel the beast inside him, and his mind lets out one last scream before it fuses, and changes beyond recognition._

  
Salder watches, horrified, as the subject begins to spasm like he’s having a fit. The subject has no history of epilepsy or seizures, he knows that, so whatever's happening in his head must be excruciating.

Salder keeps watching for a few more minutes, hoping like hell that he hasn't failed. He put so much effort into this. He spent days slavering over the tiny details. He gave his world to this project. He gave up his marriage and his social life for this project. He gave up everything that mattered for this.

He can't have failed.

This can't be happening.

Can it?

The subject goes still, and remains unmoving for more than a minute. Salder's heart feels like someone grabbed it and crushed it into pulp.

After all his best efforts, after everything he's done, he's failed. The subject is most likely going to be a vegetable of the rest of his life, and he threw away everything for a miserable failure.

He wants to cry, but he blinks back the tears. No. Can't let the others see him cry. He has to stay professional.

He straightens up, adjusts his tie and turns to the crowd. "All right," he says clearly. "Let's-"

His assistant, Chelsea, cries out from behind him, and Salder spins around.

The subject's eyes are open now, and the sight makes Salder freeze.

He has blue eyes. Salder knew that from the beginning. White male, 6’4, blue eyes, brown hair. But the man looking at him now has one blue eye and one eye that’s a livid shade of dark red. And he is very much alive, awake, and aware.  
  
“It worked,” Salder breathes. “It really worked.”  
  
At the sound, the subject’s eyes lock onto Salder's face, and his gaze is so intense that for a second it looks like he's forgotten to blink or breathe.  
  
It's a hard, cold stare full of menace, and Salder feels like a victim. It's not a feeling he's ever liked.  
  
He starts backing away.  
  
“Everyone, prepare to leave on my word. Chelsea, get that door unlocked,” he calls. “Snipers, be on guard. _Do not panic_."  
  
He backs through the line of snipers and gestures to the people closest to the door. “Open in five, four, three-”  
  
The subject lets out an inhuman scream, a scream of rage and frustration and fury that's more animal than human, and does… _something_. The chains shatter like they're made of sugar, and Salder throws himself to the floor as flying chunks of metal narrowly miss him.

He's lucky. The others aren't. Behind him, there's a lot of screaming as the metal hits the equipment, the furniture and the people.

And just like that, the smart, organised crowd of researchers becomes a mob in disarray, too confused to even contemplate escaping.

Salder looks up, and stays down. The gunmen open fire, but the subject doesn’t even notice when the bullets hit him. Instead, Salder watches, horrified, as the holes close in seconds, blood ceasing to flow from the wounds, bullets falling to the ground as the regenerating flesh pushes them out.

  
Oh, _fuck_.

Yeah, it worked all right. It worked perfectly.

They're all doomed.  
  
“CODE RED!” he roars as loudly as he can. “I REPEAT, WE HAVE A CODE RED!”  
  
Chelsea frantically hits buttons on her smartphone, and two things happen: the retracting wall slams shut, forming a barrier, and an alarm starts blaring, a shriek that makes everyone cover their ears.

Salder doesn't waste any time feeling bad for the gunmen. They knew what they were getting into.   
  
It's probably the stress of the moment, but Salder stupidly thinks that maybe they'll be safe with the wall in place. It's very thick steel, after all.

The screams of the gunmen as the subject rips into them proves him wrong. 

The siren's blare drowns out the rest of the noise, but the screams are enough to give anyone nightmares. Especially when Salder sees the pool of blood flowing slowly but steadily out from under the wall, right at his eye level.  
  
“Evacuate!” he roars, getting to his feet and resisting the urge to throw up. “Move, damn it! If you want to live, fucking move!"  
  
Duncan is close to the door when it's open, but unfortunately he’s on the edge of the crowd. The rush to get through the door turns the crowd into a riot, everyone shoving and pushing each other aside even though the wall’s between them and the subject. The ones who got injured by debris are the worst, though. They're knocking people to the floor so they can get out.  
  
He has no chance to get through just now, he knows.

Well, he wouldn't get out intact if he tried, that's for sure.

So he waits, and steps away from the chaos.  
  
He doesn’t have to wait for long. The roar is bad, but the crash is worse, and the subject charges straight _through_ the fucking _steel wall_ like it’s made of paper.  
  
A shard of the wall hits Duncan in the shoulder, but he doesn't notice. The sight of the subject has made his body colder than ice.  _No no no,_  he thinks/hopes/prays. _This cannot be happening this is not happening-_  
  
But it is.  
  
And he gets all the confirmation he needs when the subject crosses the room faster than Duncan can blink, stoops, grabs Salder's legs and swings him headfirst into the wall. There’s a sound like a sickening combination of a _crunch_ and a _squish_ , and… and…  
  
Duncan blinks, stumbles backward, raises a hand to his face.  
  
There’s blood and gore all over the wall, on the floor, on the equipment. There’s drops of blood on his face. There’s blood _everywhere_. And Salder... Salder is...

Duncan’s vision swims, and he grabs onto the wall for support.

He looks away, anywhere but at what’s left of Salder’s head. Most of the crowd made it out, except for the unlucky few who had the misfortune to see what just happened, or who got knocked to the floor and haven't got up. One of the former appears to have passed out; another’s bending over, retching. Duncan can’t blame her. Everyone else is frozen to the spot, horrified.  
  
The subject turns, and regards each of the remaining people in the lab with the same level stare, looking from one to the next with the deliberate gaze of a hunter. He’s unrecognisable now, except as a living nightmare: a naked man covered from head to toe in blood, his eyes both dark red now, his hair matted with gore.  
  
It’s a sight that Duncan knows he will never get out of his head for as long as he lives.  
  
Fortunately for him, he doesn’t have to endure it for long.  
  
The subject fixes his eyes on the helpless Duncan, who only realises how fucked he is after the subject’s in front of him. Above them, the knockout gas is _finally_  flooding into the room- _what took them so fucking long?-_  but Duncan knows it’s too late, because the subject moves so fast that he could probably kill everyone in the room in under ten seconds.

He's oddly calm, and he has no idea why.

Maybe it's because he knows he doesn't have enough time to start freaking out.

He looks up into an inhuman stare full of fury, and wonders vaguely if anyone, anything can stop this monster.  
  
Maybe a-  
  
 _Crunch._  
  
  
  
“That was the last casualty,” Eric says, pointing to Duncan’s corpse on the screen. “The gas took effect a few seconds later, before our subject could kill anyone else. He was contained easily and remains in custody. From what we’ve seen just now, it looks like Subject Xi is at this stage a complete success. He’s strong, fast, heals quickly-”

“-and he just killed one of our best scientists and colleagues, and half a dozen of our other staff!” Henri snarls back. “Are you insane? You seriously want to keep going with Xi? How the fuck are we going to control him? And how many more of us are you going to throw away, Eric?”  
  
“Salder was an accident,” Eric replies, his con-man’s smile on his face as usual, ever the competent director who can do or say no wrong. “But he should have known that something like that was going to happen-”  
  
“ _How?_ ” Lauren roars, slapping the table in anger, her cheeks flushed with rage. “ _You_ told him that Xi couldn’t get through the wall! _You_ told him that the gas would knock Xi out in under five seconds! _You_ told him that getting shot wouldn’t kill Xi, but it’d slow him down! And all of that was _bullshit!_ ”  
  
Eric doesn’t even flinch. “Lauren, these were unforseen circumstances-”  
  
“Lauren’s right,” Henri says, looking around the table for support. “This is bullshit.”  
  
Eric sighs and resorts to the blunt truth. “We need Xi. We spent too much on him to throw him away. Right now, Xi is the closest we’ve got to achieving our goal. We _can’t_ just throw him away. Where are we going to get another one? He's one of a kind, you all know that."  
  
Eric drops the smile and sneers. “And besides, yeah, I told Salder all of that. But _you_ all approved our plans for Xi. You don’t get to drop it as soon as it stops being nice and safe, that's not how the real world works. Shit happens and we need to adapt. With this project, and this goal? We _must_ keep going. Salder was good, but he was _not_ irreplaceable. Xi is. Xi is more important, and that is final.”  
  
“So what do we do with Xi?” Maria asks flatly- the voice of reason, for once. Normally, she’s too busy screaming at Max or Eric or Antoinette to reason with anyone.  
  
Eric shrugs. “What else? We test him. See if he’s anything as good as we think.”  
  
“What if he’s too good?” Maria asks.  
  
“How do you mean?”  
  
“Well, at some point you’re going to pit him against Mu, or Gamma. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort on Mu and Gamma. If Xi wins, he’ll kill them. You see the problem?”  
  
“It’s a good point,” Ashley agrees. “We’ve spent a good couple of million on them both. Not to mention Phi or Tau…”  
  
“I know what you’ll say next, Eric,” Maria says. “You’re going to say that if Xi kills them, then we can learn from how he does it. But I don’t agree. All we’ll learn is that Xi is too fast, too strong, too tough to stop. What do you say to that?”  
  
Eric thinks for a second, tapping his fingers on the table. “It’s a good point, Maria. You’re right. How about this as a solution: we send them up against Xi once we’ve thoroughly prepared them, so they _know_ what they’re up against. Then we’ll see how good Xi is. If he's as good as I think, he can take down Mu or Gamma blind."  
  
“I like it,” Ashley replies.  
  
“I have no problems with that,” Maria agrees.  
  
Eric looks at his detractors. “Are we agreed?”  
  
No response.  
  
Eric goes for _compassionate boss who's on your side and knows how it is,_ and turns on the charm. “Look, we all know this is bullshit. You know it’s bullshit, I know it’s bullshit. Salder was a great guy and he’ll be missed. But the clock's ticking and the people upstairs want results. We have to keep going. We can’t call everything off because of a clusterfuck like this. We’ve put too much into it. We _all_ have far too much to lose here.”  
  
He looks around. “So, are we agreed?”  
  
Reluctant nods.  
  
“Good. Let’s get started,” Eric says. He turns around and stares at the frozen picture. “Besides, I’m sure that Subject Xi has a lot to teach us. Don’t you, Mister Ambrose?”


	2. so i can see if i look like the monster i am inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has a monster inside them, just waiting to get out. Dean's is a little more... obvious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this turned out to be longer than I thought, what can I say. Hope it's OK. Had to edit it a bit, forgot a couple of lines. *facepalm*

_“Eric? Xi’s awake.”  
_

_“Oh, really? Good. Just in time for this round. Call Marsden, tell him to wait ten minutes. Get two of our guys to Amb- Xi's cell, tell them to deliver him there.”_ _  
_

_“You'd better remember to call him Xi. You know Andi won't like it if you slip up in front of her again."  
_

_"I know, I know."_

_"Anyway. This round’s just red shirts, right? Nobody special.”_ _  
_

_“Exactly._ Xi _should be able to deal with them quickly.”_

 

 

For the life of him, Dean has absolutely no idea where he is.

That being said, he doesn’t really give a fuck. He’s got bigger things to worry about.  _Where am I_ can wait.  
  
He remembers his life before, down to the last second. He vividly remembers walking through that back alley in the rain, smoking a cigarette and listening out for anyone who might think to attack him in the darkness, away from the few lights that completely fail to illuminate the stinking lane.  
  
He heard footsteps, and turned. Then someone hit him over the head from behind, and everything went black.

 

Right now, he’s lying on a bed in what’s obviously a prison cell, naked, dazed, drowsy and with a very sore head, and there’s a voice in his head whispering about killing everyone.  
  
So, it’s obviously a day of the week ending in y.  
  
Dean’s done some time in more than a few places, under more than a few names- never his own, though, he made sure of that- so he’s pretty much an expert when it comes to prisons. So when he gets up and takes a real look at his surroundings, he realises very quickly that this isn’t a typical prison.

To start with, his cell's huge. There are five beds, and they’re actually pretty big- and comfortable, if the one he’s lying on is the standard model- but none of the other four are occupied. In fact, there's no sign that anyone else could be living in the cell. All the prisons Dean’s been in had two inmates to a cell, and none of them had that much free space- free space didn't stay free for long. And this one has security cameras in the four corners of the ceiling, which is a hell of a lot more than the others had.

Where the _fuck_ is he?

There’s a crate by each bed, and he opens them. The one next to his bed holds clothes- five sets of shirts, pants and underwear, all black. He’s got five pairs of socks and two pairs of sneakers. Nothing’s new, but they’re not too shabby and when he tries them on, the clothes fit him just fine. So there’s that, at least. It's stupid, but he feels a whole lot less vulnerable when he's actually wearing clothes.

The other crates are all empty, though.   
  
There’s three more crates at the far wall. He opens the first and blinks in surprise- it’s full of books, worn paperbacks. He pulls a few out and reads the titles: _Oliver Twist_ , _The Silver Pigs_ , _A Study In Scarlet_. They’re all second-hand and haven't been in good condition for a while, but hey, they’re legible.

What the fuck kind of place is this?

The voice is demanding his attention now, but Dean ignores it.

He’s used to the occasional voice in his head, and they usually shut up after a while, whether they’re saying _hey asshole you fucked everything up again you’re a useless waste of space and you should just go throw yourself off a bridge_ or _kill the bastard nobody’s gonna care about one more dead rat in this sewer_.

So instead of listening to it, he opens the next crate: shampoo, conditioner, bars of soap, a toothbrush in an unopened package, generic toothpaste, lots of towels.

 _This is officially fucking weird_ , Dean thinks.

He looks around the cell and spies a door in one wall. He heads toward it and cautiously opens it to find a bathroom: toilet, sink, shower, that’s it.

_This sure as hell ain’t Kansas._

He goes back to the main room and opens the third crate: sheets, pillowcases, extra blankets. Huh.

The sound of footsteps nearby makes Dean look up, instantly alert.

_Ah, fuck._

The two people walking toward his cell don’t look like typical prison guards. They look more like cops at a riot, down to the opaque helmets that make their faces impossible to see. But they’re not holding batons, or pepper spray, or handguns. They’re holding assault rifles.

The voice is louder now, and despite himself, Dean listens.

 _You could kill them,_ it says. _Rip their heads off, tear their spines out, let their blood flow. They would be no match for you. I would make sure of it. Those guns are mere toys compared to what we can do._  
  
_Shut up,_ Dean thinks back irritably. _I’ve done this before. I know how to handle screws._  
  
_Are you blind?_ the voice snarls. _Can you not even realise how much danger we are in?_  
  
_Who the fuck are you?_ Dean asks, curious despite himself. He’s had a few conversations with the voices before, mostly when he was bored, but this is definitely one of the smarter ones.  
  
Before the voice has a chance to answer, the screws open the door, but they say nothing.

“What the fuck is this?” Dean demands, folding his arms over his chest. 

The closest screw gestures with the gun, beckoning him out.

Dean doesn’t move.

The screw flicks the safety catch off the gun, and the sound echoes.

“Fine, fucking fine,” Dean grumbles. He steps outside and stops. The second screw is right in front of him, gun levelled at his chest.

Dean is perfectly still as the first screw snaps a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, deliberately making them too tight. He's done this before, down to the screws trying to act tough by fucking with him. The screw gives him a sharp shove forward, and Dean starts walking.

 _Oh, fuck you,_ Dean thinks but doesn’t say, rolling his eyes. Typical screws, acting like they’re hardasses. They’ll get themselves shanked one night if they keep that shit up.  
  
_Handcuffs? They might as well be paper,_ the voice thinks, annoyed. _As if they could hold us. Not if you wanted to kill them. Rip them open, rend their flesh-_  
  
_Who the fucking hell are you?_ Dean asks, a little unnerved. Normally his voices are one-track minds, repeating the same thing over and over.  
  
_I have no name, nor do I want one,_ the voice replies. It’s a low, husky voice, growled out like it’s coming from something inhuman. _I was put here by those in charge of these ridiculous guards._  
  
Dean stops in his tracks and gets a blow to the shoulder as a reward. He starts walking again, but his mind is racing faster than a champion greyhound.  
  
_What do you mean?_ he finally asks as they pass a blank steel door.  
  
_They put me in your head. I have no idea why. But they chained you to a wall and imprisoned me in here, so I broke out of their chains and killed every one of them I could reach. I want their blood. I want their hearts in my mouth and their spines in my hands. I want them dead._  
  
Dean has no idea how to respond to that. Instead, he focuses on his surroundings. They’re walking down the umpteenth stark white corridor, and what’s weird is that they haven’t seen anyone else. There’s the occasional door in the wall, the occasional sign, but he hasn’t seen any other cells. He should have, by now.

What the fuck is this place?  
  
He thinks hard, tries retracing his steps in his head, and when that fails, he tries recalling the signs they passed.  
  
Anything to forget how tempting the prospect of ripping every one of those motherfucking screws apart felt.  
  
When he closes his eyes, he sees the walls painted with blood. He feels his hands ripping into flesh, tastes the blood, hears the dying screams of his victims, smells their fear and pain.  
  
He wants to do it. He wants to do it like he wants to breathe.  
  
And the prospect scares the fuck out of him.

 

  
Dean’s killed people before. He doesn’t talk about it. It was always in self-defence, always when he was attacked. Yeah, OK, he was drunk that one time, but still. The fucker attacked him first.  
  
But he never _liked_ it. He loves to fight, but _not_ to kill. He loves seeing a beaten enemy at his feet, loves knowing that he fucking won, that the bastard didn’t get the better of him, that he's going to walk out and the stupid shit who challenged him is going to be crawling at everyone's feet, begging for help. Not him.  
  
Dead bodies, though. Dead bodies scare the fuck out of him. He’s seen a few- and most of them _weren’t_ his fault, fuck you very much- and every time, he feels that same rush of fear, his throat tightening, pulse racing, nails digging into his palms as that one thought runs through his head over and over:  
  
_That could have been you. One day, it will be. You’ll be the one lying in the gutter like trash, and nobody’s going to care._  
  
He shakes the memory out of his head, puts his head down and keeps walking, grimly determined to ignore it.

  
  
  
After what seems like forever, the screws walk him through a door and into what looks oddly like an arena. There’s two levels- the upper floor, where they’re standing, and a lower floor in the centre. The upper floor is like a giant balcony, a ring around the lower floor, with a railing at the edge for onlookers. The lower floor is shaped like a huge concrete bowl, but the sides are vertical and the only way up or down is via a ladder.  
  
There are people on both floors: a bunch of lab rats and a few people in brighter, more casual clothes on the upper floor, and a small crowd, maybe thirty men on the lower floor. They’re all wearing the same black clothes as Dean, and they seem to be waiting for something.  
  
Dean’s fingers twitch.  
  
The screws march him over to the ladder, remove his handcuffs and gesture. Instead of descending, Dean turns, looks both of them in the eye, and flips them off with both hands. _Then_ he takes hold of the ladder, takes the first step down, and without realising what he’s doing, lets go of the ladder and steps back.  
  
It’s a long drop, long enough to break bones, but he lands as lightly as a cat, and turns around, only to see a very unpleasant sight indeed.  
  
This isn’t an arena, he realises. It’s a lion’s den.  
  
Thirty men stand in a circle, all of them hulking, muscular tanks who look like they mean business.  
  
Dean was going to wonder how he just landed like that. Instead, he tenses up.

For a second, he's almost scared, but then the voice speaks.  
  
_Do not be alarmed, my host,_ it says. _These pitiful things are nothing but fresh meat for us._  
  
_My name is Dean,_ Dean snaps back, pissed off. Two of the men step aside, making room for him without seeming to really notice him, and he takes his place, glaring at anyone who looks his way.  
  
_As you will._  
  
_You said you don’t have a name,_ Dean thinks, trying to distract himself. _But I gotta call you something._

Why the hell is he even talking to a- fuck it, never mind. It's the most conversation he's likely to get in this place, he'll take it.  
  
The voice seems to hesitate. _I… well. It is not my name, nor is it even an entirely accurate description of what I am, but I would not be opposed to you calling me ‘the beast’._  
  
Dean’s just fine with that.  
  
_The cretins in charge must be delusional if they think these worthless_ things _are even a match for me,_ the beast snarls, more to itself than to Dean.  
  
_You’re so sure I can take them?_ Dean asks.  
  
_I know it,_ the beast replies.  
  
Dean’s about to ask why, when someone on the upper floor claps for attention.  
  
Everyone looks up: they’ve got an audience. The lab coats line the railings, and standing in front of the ladder is a certified douchebag: a short white guy with dark hair, wearing a green shirt and jeans.  
  
The douchefucker raises a megaphone to his mouth. “Testing, testing. Can you all hear me?”  
  
Nobody says anything.  
  
“I’ll take that as a yes.” The fucknuckle runs a hand over his hair and smiles. “I’m sure that many of you have questions. Well, tough fucking luck, because you’re not getting answers. Instead, welcome to Hell. You have one mission, and one only: survive. Only one of you is going to be getting out of that pit, and that's _only_ after the rest of you are dead.”  
  
Dean’s hands become fists, and in the back of his mind, the beast chuckles. _Oh, so that is the game they wish to play._  
  
“The rules are simple: there are no rules. Except the one where anyone who tries to climb the ladder before everyone else is dead will get shot,” Fucknuckle says with a smile.  
  
The sound of a gun cocking echoes through the pit, and everyone turns. Directly opposite of Fucknuckle stands a screw, gun aimed at the ladder.  
  
“Begin on my word,” Fucknuckle says.  
  
_I’m fucked_ , Dean thinks.  
  
_Oh no,_ the beast says reassuringly. _You are far from fucked._  
  
_How?_  
  
_Simple. Let me show you._

“In three,” Fucknuckle says.

Dean desperately tries to think of other options, and comes up with nothing.  
  
_Fine, fuck it, OK._  
  
“Two.”  
  
_Excellent_ , the beast whispers.  
  
“One.”

A red mist forms behind Dean’s eyes, one that cuts out all sight, solidifying and darkening.  
  
“Go.”  
  
Dean blacks out.  
  
His eyes turn red.  
  
  
  
  
_The second the beast takes control, it wants to scream in ecstasy. It_ loves _the feeling of controlling this body, of having something it can actually touch the world with. It’s like being born again. It inhales deeply, savouring the scents that touch its nose, and stretches its arms.  
_

_Then it turns to the man beside it, grabs his arm and rips it from the socket._ _  
_

_Blood spurts; the man screams in pain; the beast smiles._ _  
_

_Yes. Oh, yes._ _  
_

_This is what it needs. This is what it loves.  
_

_This is what it was born for.  
_

_The beast has what Dean needs: boundless energy, strength, speed, ability. It has it all in spades. And it’s feeling_ very _generous._ _  
_

_It attacks, moving like lightning. It puts a fist straight through one man’s skull, and snaps another’s spine with a kick. Blood spurts, men scream in horror, in pain, and the beast just laughs, its voice sounding demonic through Dean’s mouth._

_Some of the men frantically attack, throwing themselves onto the beast/Dean in a vain attempt to stop it. It doesn’t work: the beast kicks out, shattering bones, and grabs hold of anything it can reach, ripping and rending. Others try to flee, but that is no obstacle. Once it gets its arms free, then the rest is child’s play. Within minutes, it’s on its feet, looking around at the survivors as they scream and writhe in the sea of blood and corpses._ _  
_

_It doesn’t take long to shut them all up._ _  
_

_The beast takes one last look around and sighs contentedly. Its work here is done. Time to sit back, relax, and relish the blood._ _  
_

_It steps away from the control seat, and watches as Dean wakes up.  
  
_

  
  
The darkness slowly lightens, until it’s the red mist again. Then it vanishes, but Dean is still seeing red.  
  
He blinks, looks around, and his eyes widen in shock and horror as he takes in the scene.  
  
The pit looks like a horror movie. Blood covers the walls and the floor, and bodies are everywhere. Most of them are torn up beyond recognition, and pieces of flesh and bone, along with torn limbs, are scattered around the floor.  
  
Dean looks down, and realises that he’s covered in blood. His hands are stained rust-red, and when he raises a hand to his hair, he finds that it’s sticky and matted with blood and God knows what else.

 _I did this_ , he realises dimly. _It was me. I did this.  
_  

 _That could have been you. One day, it will be. You’ll be the one torn apart, lying in a sea of blood, and nobody’s going to care.  
_  

Dean falls to his hands and knees and throws up, retching helplessly as his arms tremble. 

 _Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God-_ _  
_

_Oh, will you stop that? This will benefit you in no way whatsoever. And besides, you did nothing._ I _did. I used your body to do it. No blame is attached to you, my host- Dean._

Dean barely hears it. Instead, he makes a big mistake. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm down.

The air stinks of blood and shit and flesh and death, and Dean throws up again when he realises that the scent isn’t revolting to him, it’s _intoxicating_. He loves it. He loves the feeling of being covered in gore, the sight of his hands coated in blood.

He is _so fucked up_.  
  
_What the fuck did you do?_ he roars.  
  
_What do you think?_ the beast answers calmly.  
  
_Not that! What did you do_ to me _?_  
  
_I did nothing._ They _did. They threw us together. Forced us to become one. Forced our minds to combine. Do not turn your anger on me. I am your only ally here. Direct your need for revenge on_ them _._

Dean’s arms give out and he falls on his side in the blood. He closes his eyes and wishes that the screw with the gun would just shoot him.

Nothing happens.  
  
_We must leave_ , the beast urges him. _We cannot stay here._  
  
_Shut up. Leave me alone._  
  
_Do you want to live or not?_  
  
_Fuck you._  
  
_Stop pitying yourself! If I could change this, I would! Do you think I want you to be so distressed?_ No! _I want you to live!_ I _want to live! And for that to happen, we must co-operate with these scoundrels until we can kill them and escape! You can wallow in grief and self-loathing later, but for now we must go! For the love of everything, would you_ please _get up?_  
  
Dean doesn’t move.  
  
The beast lets out an irritated sigh. _Fine. So be it. But you drove me to this._  
  
Dean blacks out again, and he doesn’t even care.

 

 

_The beast gets up, stretches and walks over to the ladder. It tests its grip on the bloodstained rungs, and once it’s satisfied, it starts to climb.  
_

_It doesn’t get shot, but even if it did, it wouldn’t matter. Bullets mean nothing to it now._ _  
_

_It finally reaches the top and comes face to face with the man who Dean calls Fucknuckle. The beast smiles slightly at the name, and then takes a deliberate step closer, aiming to intimidate._ _  
_

_The guards are standing behind Fucknuckle, and within seconds they all have their guns trained on the beast/Dean._  
  
_The beast laughs, and then fixes its gaze on the visibly disturbed Fucknuckle. It cocks its head to the side, and remains silent.  
_

_Fucknuckle’s eyes dart around the room, but whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t find it. Instead, he looks at the guards._ _  
_

_“Take the subject back to his cell,” he orders, and backs away hurriedly until he’s behind the guards._ _  
_

Coward, _the beast thinks disdainfully. It laughs mockingly, but says nothing._ _  
_

_It doesn’t fight the guards. Instead, it goes obediently back to the cell, waits until it’s locked in, and then wonders: what should it do now?_ _  
_

_What would_ Dean _want? It is his body, after all…_ _  
_

_The beast finally comes to a decision. It enters the bathroom, turns on the tap and washes its/Dean’s hands. Once they’re_ relatively _clean, it turns the tap off, goes back to the main room, finds a towel and some soap, and carries them back into the bathroom. Then, with some displeasure, it strips off its bloodstained clothes and hands control back to Dean._

 

 

  
Dean Ambrose does not want to be alive.  
  
He wants to die, wants to be in a coma, wants to go to sleep forever. Anything but this.  
  
The beast is oddly silent, and it’s a small mercy, but one that Dean’s immensely grateful for.  
  
He blinks as he realises where he is, and wonders how he ended up here.  
  
_I cannot undo what has been done,_ the beast says quietly, _but I thought you might feel better if you were clean._  
  
Dean bites back a snarl and nods instead.  
  
_I will do my best to leave you alone now. I am truly sorry for distressing you so much. I simply want us both to live._  
  
And with that, the beast is silent, but he can still feel its presence, like having someone tall standing right behind you, looming over your shoulder.  
  
Dean turns the water on, and ups the temperature until it’s hot enough to scald. He doesn’t care. The heat feels amazing, like it’s burning away everything fucked up about him, every fucking mistake he’s ever made.  
  
Well, on the other hand, given that he is a mistake, maybe if he keeps it up he’ll just disappear.  
  
Might be a good idea, then.  
  
He turns the temperature up, and attacks himself with the soap. The water runs red as it swirls down the drain, tiny chunks of flesh getting trapped in the grating until he steps on them, forcing them through and out of his sight.  
  
It’s a long, long time before he begins to feel clean, no matter how many times he soaps himself and his hair. The water runs clear, but he’s still not content.  
  
The hot water doesn’t run out, at least. Another small mercy.  
  
Finally, he shuts the water off and leans against the wall, the air cold against his hot skin.  
  
He just wants to die. Anything but what he knows he’ll have to do again.  
  
Dean has never felt so alone in his life, even with the whatever-the-fuck-it-is in his head.  
  
_None of this is your fault, Dean._  
  
_You said you’d fucking leave me alone!  
_

_I was, but I cannot just leave you like this._ _  
_

_I want to die. Just let me fucking die._ _  
_

_Please. Do not harm yourself. Do not let them win._ _  
_

_What?_ _  
_

_They did this to you. They abducted you, tortured you, forced me into your head. They forced you to let me kill those men. They murdered those men and probably countless others._ _  
_

_The fuck do you care? You get off on this!_ _  
_

_I love blood and death. That I will not deny. But do not forget, I am part of you now. I do not want to see you suffering. Is that so hard to comprehend?_  
  
Dean closes his eyes and tilts his head back until it hits the tiles. _Well, yeah, it fucking is. You’re the first voice in my head who wasn’t trying to get me to kill myself or burn everything down._ _  
_

_I am not a manifestation of your inner psyche. It makes all the difference._ _  
_

_Great. I’ve got my own fucking shrink in my head, and it’s a fucking serial killer.  
_

_My love of killing does not make me an amoral psychopath,_ the beast says indignantly. _  
_

Despite himself, Dean barks out a laugh.  
  
_I am serious! I still crave flesh and blood, but I believe that becoming a part of you has given me a sense of... morality. Conscientiousness. Justice, even._  
  
Justice? _My kind of justice involves breaking heads._ _  
_

_Yes, but you do not kill everyone who even slightly annoys you, do you?_ _  
_

_I want to._ _  
_

_So does everyone else, I would wager._ _  
_

_So, what, you didn’t have a sense of justice, or morality, or any of that shit before?_ _  
_

_No. I wanted only to kill. But now I have become more than that. I am what they want me to be, a ravenous killer, but I am_ not _mindless. I can and I_ will  _think for myself._

_If you're more than what they want you to be, why did you keep telling me to kill them?_

_It seemed like the best course of action at the time. I may have got slightly carried away. But that is beside the point, Dean._ _We must stay alive. We can bring this place down. We can escape. You do not want to be here? Then we must leave. And we will.  
_

Dean inhales, and silently thanks any God that exists that all he can smell is the hot air, tinged with soap.  
  
_You think we can do it?_

 _I know we can. But we must plan. It will take time._  
  
Dean despairs. _I have to do this again?  
_

_I believe so. But if you want, I will kill them. And I will make sure you see none of it.  
_

_Yes. Do it. Please._ _  
_

_As you wish._  
  
Dean towels himself dry, tosses the towel on the floor and finally walks out of the bathroom. He pauses, surprised. Sitting on his bed is a tray of food.  
  
_Ah, good. Our captors have not forgotten that you need to eat._  
  
Dean throws some clothes on and devours the food. It’s the first meal he’s had in what seems like years, and even though it’s cheap and bland, it still tastes amazing.  
  
Once he’s done, he puts the tray on the next bed, climbs into his own bed and closes his eyes.  
  
He’s asleep in seconds.

  
  
  
_“That… was fucking sick, Eric.”  
_

_“What exactly did you expect, Max? You knew damn well what we did to him. You knew exactly what he’s capable of now. Xi has perfectly lived up to our expectations.”_ _  
_

_“Yeah, but...”_ _  
_

_“Quiet. We have to consider our plans now.”_ _  
_

_“What plans?”_ _  
_

_“Xi’s going to be out for a while. We need to discuss what to do with him when he wakes up.”_ _  
_

_“You drugged him?”_ _  
_

_“No. The endosymbiont is supplying him with energy and the like, so Xi can use all his energy and keep going. But when Xi’s asleep, the endosymbiont is dormant, so the extra power’s gone and so his body needs to recuperate. He’ll be asleep until he’s recovered.”_ _  
_

_“How long will that take?”_ _  
_

_“A day at the least, maybe two.”_ _  
_

_“So what now?”_ _  
_

_“That’s what I was asking you.”_ _  
_

_“Oh. Well, I guess we proceed with the tests as planned…”_ _  
_

_“Sounds good.”_ _  
_

_“And Xi did really well, so do we really need to repeat the test? We don’t have that many red shirts on tap, and we definitely don’t have enough to just throw thirty away at the drop of a hat for shits and giggles. I think we could repeat the test a hundred times and get the same results.”_ _  
_

_“I think you’re right. I say, let’s throw him in with somebody a little higher up the ladder.”_ _  
_

_“Do you have a specific subject_ _in mind?”_

 _“Gamma.”_ _  
_

_“Gamma? Well… yeah, OK. I can see that working. I don’t think we can learn anything from watching Xi destroy more red shirts.”_ _  
_

_“Exactly. All right, I’ll make the preparations.”_

 

  
  
  
Dean wakes up feeling like he’s been hit over the head with a hammer. He groans, turns over and finally drags himself up to a sitting position.  
  
Inside him, he hears a noise like a tiny grumble, and then suddenly the ache in his head vanishes.  
  
_What the fuck?_  
  
_I apologise for the delay. I can only aid you while I am awake. When I am asleep, I can do nothing for you._  
  
_That’s… all right. Thanks._  
  
_Be on alert, my- Dean. Our captors are returning._  
  
Dean turns, and groans. Four screws walk down the corridor, and somehow, they’re carrying even more weapons than the last two.  
  
_I do believe we are scaring them,_ the beast says, satisfied. _By all means, let us scare them some more._  
  
_As long as you do it,_ Dean thinks back.  
  
_Of course. Now, I believe you should do your best to act as though you are not at all concerned by this._  
  
Dean nods, forgetting that the beast can’t actually see him, and stretches.

He turns to the screws as they near the cell and yawns. “What, I don’t even get to eat first?”

The nearest screw beckons him out, and Dean sighs. “Only because you’re pretty, sweetheart.”

It's not even hard to pretend. He's not afraid of screws. Never was. Even when he got pepper sprayed that one time, and Christ, that hurt like a bitch.

That's the thing about screws, Dean knows: they're more afraid of the convicts than the convicts are of them. Screws are weak. They rely on weapons. They have hardly anyone on their side. And it's the guys in the yard who have the advantage, because there's a shitload of them and they all have one common enemy.

Dean's never been afraid of the people who claim to be in charge.  
  
He saunters outside and puts his hands out in front of him. “Put the cuffs on, officer. It’s a fair cop.”  
  
The screws stare back at him wordlessly, and Dean sighs again. “It was worth a shot.”  
  
He puts his hands behind him, and the screws cuff him.  
  
Is it his imagination, or are they making the cuffs tighter again?  
  
_They fear you and they dislike your humour. By all means, needle them some more. They cannot hurt us._  
  
_Got it._  
  
Dean cracks a grin. “That’s all you got?”  
  
The screws stare back, and Dean rolls his eyes. “God, don’t any of you have a sense of humour?”  
  
_I believe not._  
  
They start walking. The screws lead him down more corridors, and Dean resists the urge to drag his feet or fuck with their heads again.  
  
He doesn’t doubt the beast’s word about how their guns can do nothing, but he really hates getting shot.  
  
He doesn’t like talking about that either.

  
  
The screws lead him back into the arena, and this time there’s a lot more people watching.  
  
Oh. And Fucknuckle’s there, too.  
  
Just the sight of him makes Dean want to stake him out near an anthill, rip him open, pour honey in the wound and leave him to die.  
  
_Stop it,_ he snarls.  
  
_I did nothing._  
  
_That wasn’t me. That was you._  
  
_I am not putting thoughts in your mind._ They _did that when they put me here._  
  
Dean mutters something and pays attention to the pit. There’s only one occupant, and now he’s on alert.  
  
_Ah. They must have a serious challenge for us. That, or they have decided that our skill at killing their minions has necessitated a severely reduced number of opponents._  
  
_Would you fucking speak English?_

_We killed so many minions that they do not have enough to give us more than one at a time._

_Oh. I don't think so, though. If they never had that many in the first place, why'd they give us thirty at once?_

_Quite._

The screws lead Dean over to Fucknuckle, who jerks his head dismissively toward the pit.  
  
_He is afraid. He thinks to act as though we are nothing, but he does so because he does not want to show fear in front of us._  
  
_Like that’ll work._  
  
The screws take off the handcuffs, and Dean ignores the ladder and jumps off. He lands like a cat again, and grins.  
  
_Show time._  
  
The guy in the pit is a tall, nervous, skinny guy with closely-cropped brown hair and dark eyes. He’s fidgeting, like a junkie in urgent need of his drug of choice, and he barely seems to notice Dean.  
  
_Drugs?_  
  
_Possibly. Perhaps he is simply not observant._  
  
Fucknuckle claps his hands for attention, and both men look up.  
  
“Today, your match will be a little different. What you have done so far was simply a warm up. Subject Xi…” and he looks at Dean, “meet Subject Gamma. Don’t bother getting acquainted. Same rules as before: only one of you is walking out. Anyone climbing the ladder before the other person is dead gets shot. Understand?”  
  
Dean nods reluctantly. Gamma twitches, looks up, and nods a few times.  
  
_You ready?_  
  
_I am always ready._  
  
“Good. In three… two…”  
  
The world goes dark, and Dean’s eyes turn red.  
  
“ _One._ Go.”

 

 

 _The beast smiles as it gains control, and immediately focuses on its target, intent on its prey._  
  
_Subject Gamma knows how to move. He's_ _running at a speed that the beast can barely follow, making it hard to see him._

Ah, _it thinks._ Super speed. This is what they think will challenge us.  
  
_The beast stays still, watching, and then it notices something. Gamma hasn’t tried to attack. Instead, he’s running around them, occasionally running right or left as if anticipating a move that isn’t coming._  
  
He is fast, _the beast thinks._ But he cannot attack us.  
  
_At first, the beast is annoyed. It wonders if this is meant to be an actual challenge. It easily killed thirty angry men, do their captors believe that it can’t take one scrawny man who can run fast?_  
  
_And then it realises the truth. From what it has seen in Dean’s mind, this is abnormal physiology. Moving this fast is simply not normal.  
_

_This is but another warm-up. A minor test, to get Dean accustomed to the concept.  
_

_And this test is for them and them alone. For if Subject Gamma cannot attack, then he is doomed. This is not a test for him._ _  
_

_It is an execution._ _  
_

_The beast ponders this, wondering how important it and Dean are considered to be. Finally, it realises that it cannot stand still musing over the mysteries of life forever. Its soul cries out for death, even though it is attempting to suppress its needs for Dean's sake, and Subject Gamma’s blood has yet to be spilled._ _  
_

_It moves._ _  
_

_Gamma is fast. The beast is not quite as fast, but it is no bumbling child._ _  
_

_The beast thinks. Gamma will simply dodge any manoeuvre, so what... ah. Ah, yes.  
  
The beast feints left. Gamma moves right, and the beast changes direction abruptly and runs as fast it can._

_Gamma, not expecting the trick, can't dodge in time. The beast crashes into him, sending him flying into the wall, Gamma’s head meeting the concrete wall with a_ crunch _.  
_

_It’s not enough for the beast._  
  
_It approaches the fallen Gamma, kneels and pauses, looking for signs of life.  
_

_There. Gamma’s chest rises and falls. How he’s still alive is a mystery, but if his cracked head is any indication, he won’t be alive for long, even if the beast left him alone._ _  
_

_As if it would do that.  
_ _  
  
_ _  
_

_Once it’s done with Gamma, the beast is about to give control back to Dean, when it remembers its promise. Ah, yes._

_Instead, it climbs the ladder, nearly slipping off once with its blood-covered hands. At the top, it turns to Fucknuckle and smiles, letting Dean's teeth gleam white against the blood on his face._ _  
_

_Fucknuckle swallows nervously, tries to pretend that he didn’t and nods to the guards.  
  
The beast doesn't resist as the guards cuff it and lead it back to the cell. Instead, it chuckles under its breath the whole time, aiming to unnerve the guards._ _  
_

_The beast waves at their retreating backs, and then sighs. As much as it hates cleaning off the blood it rightfully shed, it will do it for Dean’s sake.  
  
_ _Roughly half an hour later, the beast steps out of the shower, dries itself off and gets dressed. Then it passes control back to Dean._ _  
_

 

  
  
Dean opens his eyes and finds himself sitting on his bed, a new tray of food in front of him, freshly showered and dressed. He looks down at his arms, and feels immense relief wash over him when he can’t see even the slightest trace of blood. He takes a deep breath, but all he smells is soap.  
  
Thank God for that.  
  
_I did the best I could._  
  
Dean nods curtly and picks up the plastic spoon on the tray. Just the sight of the food is making him even hungrier than he was before, if that’s even possible.  
  
Once he’s devoured everything, he curls up in his bed and closes his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
_“Haha, I knew it!”_ _  
_

_“You knew what?”_ _  
_

_“That Gamma wouldn’t stand a chance against Xi. That idiot Mika should never have made that bet, fucker owes me twenty now-”_

_“_ What _did you just say? You made a_ bet? _On the tests?”_ _  
_

_“Well, yeah, Andi, everyone’s doing it-”_

_“Eric, we are supposed to be_ professionals _, and you’re all gambling like you’re watching the Melbourne Cup, or a greyhound race? These are_ people _, Eric! Show some fucking decency!”_ _  
_

_“God, Andi-”_ _  
_

_“No! Eric, while I am your superior you_ will _treat these people with the respect they deserve, and you will treat_  me _with the respect I deserve! And I want you and Mika in my office in half an hour!”_ _  
_

_“Ugh, fine.”_

 

  
_“Andi?”_

_“Oh. Hello, Maria.”_ _  
_

_“Why is Eric grumbling about how you’re a, quote, ‘Ugly mean fucking bitch’, unquote?”_ _  
_

_“I’m shutting down his little gambling ring.”_ _  
_

_“Oh. I see.”_

_“Maria. Did you_ know _about this? And you never told me?_ _”  
_

_“I had my own theories, but I never had any evidence, so I said nothing. I didn't know, Andi, I swear. But I’m not surprised.”_ _  
_

_“Oh. I_ see _.”_ _  
_

_“Xi did beat Gamma, then?”  
_

_“Of course.”_ _  
_

_“Why of course?”_ _  
_

_“I know Mika was raving about how Gamma’s speed can outdo anyone, but he forgot that speed is all Gamma has- had, now. All he could do was try to dodge Xi, and he wasn’t bright enough to try making a real plan. Once Xi got his hands on Gamma, it was game over.”_ _  
_

_“Gamma did well against the red shirts, didn’t he?”_ _  
_

_“Oh yes. He just ran around and waited for the others to die. Once there were only a few left, he deliberately ran slow enough for them to follow him, then he led them into a wall or each other.”_ _  
_

_“So what happens to Xi now?”_ _  
_

_“Well, he did perfectly against the red shirts and Gamma, so we’re combining them: we’re giving him a few blue shirts to play with.”_ _  
_

_“And after that?”_ _  
_

_“We’ll go from there. By the way, how are things going with Omega? Or Oscar, as some of these idiots keep calling it.”_ _  
_

_“The whole division’s going well. We got some new women in today…”_

 

  
  
The next day, they throw Dean into the pit with ten men, all of whom seem to have some kind of ability. 

One jumps like a cat, another bounces off the walls. Another guy makes sparks fly from his hands, but they fail to so much as set anything on fire, let alone electrocute anyone.  
  
The beast makes short work of all of them, and none of them even manage to land a decent hit on it.  
  
Dean- or rather, _the beast_ \- is just that good.  
  
Once he’s back in the cell, showered, dressed and fed, Dean decides not to go to sleep. Instead, he digs through the crate of books, picks up the first one to come to hand- _The Fellowship of the Ring_ \- and starts reading.  
  
He’s never been much of a reader, but he focuses on the book with laser-like focus.  
  
Right now, he needs an anchor. He needs something more. Something to remind him of his real life, something to break up the pattern of wake up-kill people-shower-eat-sleep.  
  
Something to remind him that he’s still human, even though he's not seeing the carnage now.  
  
He’s steadily working his way through the book when the lights go out, and he sighs, puts the book on the floor next to his bed, and goes to sleep.

  
  
_“I’m sensing that Xi’s having trouble adjusting. Maybe we should try something new.”  
_

_“Like what, spiking his food with happy pills?”_ _  
_

_“I was thinking giving him a roommate.”_ _  
_

_“Um, no.”_ _  
_

_“Why?”_ _  
_

_“You give him a roommate, he'll be sharing his cell with a corpse.”_ _  
_

_“Try him with a red shirt. Win-win situation- if they get along, Xi gets a friend, and if they don’t, we don’t lose anyone important.”  
_

_“Yeah, but if Xi makes friends with a red shirt, then what happens when we use the red shirt for his actual purpose and he dies?”_ _  
_

_“There’s plenty more where they come from. We can spare one red shirt if it makes Xi happy. Spare no expense on Xi."_ _  
_

_“All right. I’ll see what I can do.”_  
  
  
  
  
  
Dean doesn’t want to kill anyone now.  
  
So, of course, he does exactly that.  
  
Well, OK, it was an accident.  
  
As per usual- and oh, how he hates that he can call it _usual_ now- the screws pull him out of the cell and lead him off shortly after he wakes up.

They lead him through the network of corridors, and Dean winces as they pass a certain T-junction.  
  
Yesterday, as they'd walked past, they'd bumped into a huge team of screws, leading five prisoners who were chatting away like they weren't totally fucked.

Two of them had ended up as his opponents. God knew what had happened to the other three.

Dean has no idea if the other three are even alive now, but he half expects to see them again at the same spot, giving him hell for killing their friends.  
  
_Each and every time, it is us or them,_ the beast thinks firmly. _I would much rather it be them._  
  
_I_ get _it._  
  
He’s on edge, now. He’s tense, really fucking annoyed, and it lasts all the way through the latest massacre, even after he’s woken up how many hours later, clean and dressed, with no idea of what the beast did while he was out.  
  
He’s nearly done with his latest generic meal- and seriously, hasn’t whoever’s making this shit ever heard of trying to make the food _edible?_ \- when the sound of people walking meets his ears.  
  
_What the…_  
  
It’s four screws, escorting a prisoner: a short man with blonde hair and pale eyes.

Dean recognises him instantly, and the prisoner recognises Dean a few seconds later: he’s one of the three survivors.

Immediately, the guy tries to back up a step, but the screws grab his arms and pull him along regardless.  
  
The guy starts to protest, and his accent instantly gets on Dean’s nerves: it’s high, nasal and very fast, and it makes Dean want to rip out his throat, his fingers twitching. “What the fuck? I’m not goin’ in there, you tryin’ to get me killed? I’m not gonna be roommates with that sick fuck, he killed Brian and Tom!”

Dean has no idea how to react. He settles on the most pressing issue.  
  
_Roommate? Why the hell would they give me a roommate?_  
  
_Perhaps they think you need company._  
  
_I’ve got you._  
  
_You and I are not friends as such. We are allies. As much as I do like you, I do not believe we are friends in the conventional sense._  
  
_Fuck. All right. But why this guy?_  
  
_I can only think of two explanations: either whoever made this decision did not take the obvious into account when deciding, or they want us to kill this man._  
  
_I don’t want to kill_ anyone _._  
  
_I know._  
  
The guy- his _roommate?_ \- is still ranting about how psychopathic Dean is when Dean finally snaps back to reality.  
  
“-and I heard it from Joe, and he heard it from Dave, he said Dave overheard one of those scientists, said this psycho ripped a guy apart! Like, they couldn’t even find the guy’s spine!”  
  
Dean raises an eyebrow.  
  
_I may have taken some liberties with Subject Gamma._  
  
_I don’t want to know._  
  
_I may have ripped his spine out, I will concede that, but-_  
  
_I said, I_ don’t want to know.  
  
_I apologise._

“You can’t make me go in there! I won’t do it! I- no! Help! Somebody!”

The screws take no notice of what the guy’s saying. Instead, one opens the door and the others shove him inside.  
  
Dean doesn’t move. Instead, he just shrugs as the guy backs away fearfully, his eyes fixed on Dean’s face.  
  
The screws are already gone by the time the guy’s at the far wall, and Dean decides to throw him a bone.  
  
“I’ll tell you something,” he drawls. “I got nothing against you. Keep your mouth shut and stay on the other side and I won’t lay a single damn finger on you. Understand?”  
  
The guy nods frantically, and Dean chuckles. “Good.”  
  
Seeing no need for further conversation, Dean finishes his shitty meal, puts the tray on the floor and goes to sleep.

 

  
Dean’s not a bad guy at heart. He’s got standards.  
  
Yeah, he knows damn well that there’s a lot of people who’d burst into laughter at the idea of Dean Ambrose having standards. They can all go and fuck themselves.  
  
He knows that it’s not this mouthy fucker’s fault that he got thrown in with the maniac who rips people apart.  
  
He’s going to stick to his word. He won’t touch the guy.  
  
Dean’s never killed anyone for being annoying, and he sure as fuck isn’t going to start now.  
  
Of course, he draws the line at annoying people who are trying to kill him.  
  
He’ll make an exception for them.

 

Of all the varying ways that people have tried to kill Dean, being smothered is a new one.  
  
He wakes up starving for air, feeling like someone's crushing his head, and he blindly strikes out.  
  
His hand hits something soft, and the pressure on his head lessens.  
  
He manages to sit up, and the pillow over his face falls off.  
  
It’s dark as fuck, but Dean doesn’t need eyes to know what’s going on once he gets his bearings.  
  
He’s not confused any more. Now, he’s _pissed off_.  
  
“What the fuck?” he snarls.  
  
The fucker’s too busy being in agony to even try to begin explaining.

Dean doesn't care that he's not getting a response. This fucker crossed the line.  
  
_Oh, this is going too far._  
  
_You stay the fuck out of this._ I’ll _handle it._  
  
_As you wish._

The lights come on just as Dean strikes out.

It’s not a hard punch. At least, Dean doesn’t think it’s a hard punch. But he punches the guy in the stomach, and then there’s a sickening sound like somebody hitting a watermelon with an axe.

The sudden change from dark to light makes his eyes ache for a second, and he needs a moment to adjust. He blinks a few times, wipes away the tears and takes a much-needed deep breath.

Then he sees what he did, and smells the scent of death- blood, shit and gore.  
  
“Oh, _fuck me_.”

 

  
  
_“Are you… are you kidding me?”  
_

_“God, I wish I was.”_

_“He hit that guy so hard that he sent him flying head-first into the door. And instead of bouncing off, the guy’s head split open on the bar!”_

_“I know what he did, Margot. I’ve watched it five times. Telling me isn’t going to change what happened.”_

_“But look at his eyes! That thing in his head didn’t do anything, that was all him! They’re both red when he’s not in control, and they weren’t just then!”_

_“What’s your point?”_

_“You never said he’d have that kind of strength without the thing helping him, Eric.”_

_“You weren’t paying attention, Margot. When they’re both awake, the endosymbiont is automatically enhancing him. It didn’t need to be in control.”_

_“I don’t like this, Eric. What happens if he stops playing nice?”_

_“I’ve got a plan.”_

_“Oh, do elaborate.”_

_“Andi?! Why are you behind me? When did you get here?”_

_“A few seconds ago. But don’t let me interrupt, do go on with your plan.”_

_“Tau.”_

_“Tau? Tau’s nowhere near Xi’s level!”_

_“You know that countermeasure we’ve been preparing? I think it’s ready.”_

_“You think it’ll work?”_

_“I wouldn’t propose sending Tau in if I didn’t think it would. I mean, Tau’s good, but he’s no match for Xi.”_

_“I see your point. So how do we do it?_

_"Get it going just before we throw Tau in with Xi. Hopefully, it should take effect right away. As long as Xi stays in the cell, it should be working."_

_"...what happens if it doesn’t?”_

_“We get Tau out and trank Xi.”_

_"Right. Do we give Xi another test when he wakes up?”_

_“No. Send Tau in and we’ll see what happens.”_

_“All right. Get it done, Eric. If this goes wrong, you’re paying for it.”_

_“Understood, Andi.”_

  
  
Dean isn’t sure when he finally goes to sleep. It's the last thing he wants after he sees the wreck of his would-be murderer’s head. He rips the pillow apart and tosses the debris to the floor, and then he waits, huddled on his bed, rocking back and forth until some more screws turn up with a body bag and other miscellaneous stuff. Once they're done cleaning, Dean closes his eyes and silently wishes that he never existed.

 _That could have been you. One day, it will be. You’ll be one more wrecked corpse in a trash bag, and no one's going to care.  
_  
  
_This was not your fault,_ the beast tells him.  _None of this was your fault._  
  
_You always say that._

_It is true. You only defended yourself. You gave him a chance and yet he tried to kill you anyway. What else could you have done?_

_I killed him. And I didn’t even need your help. What kind of monster am I?_

_You are not a monster. You are a victim. This was_ not your fault.

_Stop trying to counsel me. We both know you got off on what I did._

_I will not deny that it was…_ delicious. _I enjoyed it greatly. You have a wonderful talent for violence._

_Yeah, so shut up._

It’s not his best rejoinder, but at least the beast shuts up.  
  
  
Dean hurls his pillow at the wall. After that, he doesn’t even want to see another pillow. He rips the sheets off his bed and tosses them aside.  
  
There’s nobody else in the cell except him and the beast, but he’s too paranoid to leave anything nearby that someone could suffocate him with.

Finally, he lies back on his stripped bed and shuts his eyes.  
  
  
He wakes up, sees his wrecked bed and the wrecked pillow and the suspiciously-clean door of his cell and winces.  
  
Yeah, that happened.  
  
Shit.

It’s kinda stupid, now that he thinks about it.

He just can’t help being paranoid. It’s part of who he is. Even though it wears off sometimes.  
  
All of his trash tends to go missing while he’s asleep, he’s found. His blood-soaked clothes vanish and get replaced with new, untorn clothes; they replace the soap he uses with new bars and get rid of the discarded trays and dishes.

So he throws the torn sheets and wrecked pillow into a corner, puts the tray on top and does his best to remake his bed with fresh sheets.  
  
It’s stupid, he knows. He was never good at making beds. But he’s got to hold onto his humanity somehow.  
  
Even if it is something as minor as trying to keep his cell clean.  
  
By the time he’s putting his discarded pillow back where it should be, the sound of footsteps is echoing down the corridor.  
  
He turns, and sighs. Four more screws and a new guy: a tall man with dark hair, one part dyed blond. He’s got a beard and dark eyes, and he looks apprehensive, like he has no idea what’s going on.  
  
“Really,” Dean mutters to himself. “Really? After what I did to the last one, they’re giving me a new one?”  
  
_Be on guard. This may be a trap._  
  
_You think so?_  
  
_It…_  
  
Dean’s instantly on alert. _What? What’s wrong?_  
  
_I… I do not…_  
  
_What the_ fuck?

 

  
  
_The beast is confused. At first, it’s as though it’s hearing a constant buzzing sound, like the roar of a crowd. But the buzz intensifies, grows, and the beast can finally make out what it really is: a voice that sounds like thousands of voices as one, repeating a single word._

_“Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.”_

_The beast tries to ignore it, but the buzz turns from a simple sound to a command, like a series of waves crashing into it, never ceasing their assault._

_Valiantly, the beast tries to hold out, but the command is relentless, and eventually all it can do is succumb._

_The beast curls up in the back of Dean’s head, dead to the world, taking all of Dean’s strength with it._

 

  
  
Dean is frozen to the spot, staring ahead of him.  
  
The screws reach the door, open it, uncuff the new guy and shove him inside.  
  
Dean can hear it in his head, the voices screaming at him to sleep.  
  
As much as he tries, he’s not strong enough to resist, and he's down before he even knows he's lost the fight.  
  
He’s out like a light before he hits the ground.  
  
  
  
_“That… was not what I was expecting to happen.”_


	3. so i'll believe that we can make it out of here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The puppet is not allowed to escape. No matter how far or fast it runs, the strings will always pull it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally going to just be the third of five chapters, but now it's the third of six. Fourth one might be a bit short as a result, but we'll see. Hope it's good.

Seth Rollins does not have the slightest idea of what's going on.

Despite all his attempts to gather information, to ascertain the slightest of details, to come to any kind of conclusion at all, he has finally given up.

To put it bluntly, he doesn't have a fucking clue.

By his estimate, he’s been there for about a week (give or take God knows how long). During that week, he’s been in a lot of different cells, had maybe thirty different cellmates, and he’s been in more fights in the past few days than he has in years.  
  
To be fair, most of them were typical dominance fights. Wannabe alpha males feeling insecure, douchebags wanting to be in charge, guys with short fuses picking fights over tiny things. 

So, basically, it's just like every other institution on the planet. With more blood and broken bones.

  
  
Seth's never been in prison before, not that he thinks it would have helped. He got held overnight in the station once, but that was when he got rounded up with a bunch of other guys after a concert turned into a riot.  
  
He didn’t even get charged, and he always points out whenever the topic comes up that he didn't get charged because he had nothing to do with it. Wrong place, wrong time.  
  
So now, suffice to say, after a week in an environment that’s so emotionally charged that he’s surprised that there hasn’t been a riot yet, he’s a little on edge.  
  
Or, to put it more concisely, his week has fucking sucked balls.

 

For what it's worth, Seth knows he’s not the most intimidating of men. Yeah, he’s tall and brawny, but he doesn’t _look_ like a bruiser. He doesn't have that angry, animalistic expression, the one that says  _I'll take on every one of you fuckers and eat you for lunch if you look at me the wrong way_.  
  
So he’s had a few people take him for a soft target.  
  
They all worked out very quickly that Seth Rollins is not, nor has he ever been, a soft target.  
  
As a kid, he was always compared to a beanpole: tall, skinny, and no meat on him. To be fair, it wasn't inaccurate, but more importantly, it wasn't permanent, and most of the other kids never realised that.  
  
He got picked on at school, and being the type who didn't like confrontations and was afraid of reprisals from authority, he learned to run, climb, dodge. To never be there when the bullies came knocking.  
  
Even when he had his growth spurt, and put on weight as well as height, the bullies still took him for a victim.  
  
After a while, Seth got sick of running.  
  
That was when he discovered that he was damn good at throwing a punch. He was even better at kicking the shit out of people.

Several detentions and a suspension later, Seth decided to make it obvious.  
  
Over summer break, he started working out. By the time school was in session again, he’d put on muscle, and anyone who fucked with him quickly got the message.  
  
Of course, it went two ways. Despite never so much as poking someone who didn’t attack him first, Seth found that he’d gained a reputation as a bully.  
  
That always mystified him. Especially since very few bullies spent all their free time in the library.  
  
He never got shit from the teachers, though. They all saw him as a model student- polite, calm, reserved. Nobody to worry about.  
  
That didn’t stop the other kids from practically running to get out of his way when he walked through the corridors.  
  
Seth never really cared, though. It’s not like he was there to make friends.  
  
Once he’d escaped the never-ending torment that was high school, he’d thought he’d never be in a place like that again.

Yeah, that was wishful thinking, to say the least.

And now here he is, in a somehow-not-an-actual-prison, and he is confused as all fuck.

 

Well. Confused is one thing, but Seth's both impressed and terrified by the scale of this... this... whatever it is. 

By his quick and rough calculations, hundreds of people have been abducted and forced into it. It must have been going on long before he got dragged into it, but he's never heard anything about it. No mention on the news of a weird increase in disappearing persons, no FBI investigations.  
  
Nobody he’s asked has any idea where they are, or how they got there.  
  
Seth’s done his best to get as many people to talk to him as he can, and he’s compared their stories. From what he can tell, everyone was abducted in the USA, no matter where they came from originally. All of them remember their old lives. He can't find any common element except that they're all men who were in the USA, and that itself raises a few questions- like how the hell so many people have gone missing without anyone noticing the scale involved. He asked a few of his cellmates, but nobody could remember hearing anything in the media about mass abductions.

In theory, all the movies and TV Seth's seen say that in the end, it's the people at the bottom who make the perfect victims- the homeless, runaways and so on. But very few of the people Seth's talked to fit that description. So how has nobody noticed? 

And there's another question Seth's freaking out over- how long has it been since they were abducted? Are people still looking for them? Are they all operating under the wrong assumption that it hasn't been very long? He's asked, but nobody has any idea of what the date is, other than 'sometime in 2014'.  
  
It's a tad unnerving, to say the least.  
  
That being said, as boring as hearing the same answer over and over is, it’s better than the alternative.  
  
Because by the end of the week, Seth’s learned that while just about everyone in whatever cell he’s in has a very high chance of being taken away to be thrown to whatever monsters the people in charge have cooked up, he is the lone exception. That he knows of.  
  
Seth has no idea what’s going to happen to him, and he isn’t sure that he wants to know.  
  
Then again, given what he’s heard, the alternative may just be too horrible for him to risk _not_ knowing.

  
  
The first notable thing happens about a day after he first wakes up, by his estimate. After a day of monotony, he’s currently experiencing the very bad combination of being bored as hell and scared out of his goddamn mind.  
  
Since he woke up, he’s had two fairly pleasant conversations. OK, one guy tried to strangle him before Seth broke his nose, at which point the guy backed off, cursing and bleeding everywhere, but that's the exception.

Oddly enough for somewhere that looks so much like a prison, nothing happened afterwards. No guards came to break up the fight, and Seth wasn't punished for hurting the other guy.

It's weird.

There’s four other guys in the cell: two of them are OK, one’s been asleep since Seth arrived, and the last is the nutfuck who tried to kill him.  
  
Unfortunately for all of them, there’s nothing to do: they’ve been given necessities like food and toiletries, but that’s it. So they’re straddling the line between tedium and tense, waiting for _something_ to happen.  
  
Something happens, all right.  
  
At first, Seth thinks the people who show up outside the cell are riot cops- that's certainly what their uniforms remind him of. Instead, they open the cell and drag out the nutfuck, one of the OK guys and the sleeping man, who doesn’t even wake up as he’s pulled out of his bed.  
  
The decent guy puts up a token fight, but quickly succumbs when one of the guards points a gun at him. The nutfuck, on the other hand, fights like a wild animal, cursing and screaming until Seth wonders if he’ll start foaming at the mouth.  
  
Instead, another guard hits him over the head with the butt of… his? her? gun, and they drag him away without saying so much as a word.  
  
Seth looks over at his only remaining cellmate, a guy who looks like a punk with his pink and green Mohawk. “What the fuck?”  
  
The other man shrugs. “Don't look at me.”  
  
“Who were those guys, robots?”  
  
“They’re the guards. They never say anything, they just take people away or throw them in, when they're not bringing food. Don’t bother trying to talk to them, you’re wasting your breath.”  
  
“Take people away? Where to?”  
  
The punk mutters something under his breath. “No idea. All I know is, they take someone away, he’s sure as fuck not coming back. Nobody comes back. Ever.”  
  
Shivers run down Seth’s spine, and he shudders. “Great.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
The conversation grinds to a halt, and neither man tries to start it again.

  
  
Three days later, Seth is still bored and still terrified. 

Over the past few days, a lot of people have been thrown into the cell. Most of them have since been dragged out, kicking and screaming.

Right now, Seth has two cellmates: the punk and another guy who's apparently singing along to something in his head, using the bed as a drum. It's not that annoying, so nobody's told him to cut that shit out yet. 

Well, it's not like they've got anything else to do other than what they can come up with themselves.

Seth's staring at the wall, killing time by going through the plot of every Harry Potter book with all the details he can recall in a vain attempt to prevent himself from dwelling on the horror. 

Specifically, he's trying not to calculate just how much time he has left before the guards take him away.

He's at the point where Harry's about to reach the Triwizard Cup when the guards come back.

Seth feels like he's in a sci-fi film whenever he looks at them. The uniforms cover them and obscure their features so well that for all he knows, they could be remote-controlled suits with no human inside them.  
  
They open the door, and Seth is frozen to the spot, silently praying that they’re not here for him.  
  
But his luck isn’t in, and one of the guards beckons to him. Apparently, they're in a polite mood today.  
  
At first, Seth doesn’t move. His legs won’t work, he feels like his bones have turned to jelly, and all he can do is frantically deny what just happened in the vain hope that denying it will somehow make it not happen..  
  
 _It’s not me they didn’t mean me it’s a mistake it’s not-_  
  
Before he can even try to react, one of the guards walks in and grabs his arm, hauling him off his bed and past his cellmates, who look both scared and sympathetic. However, neither one so much as moves.

Well, what _could_ they do to help, even if they wanted to?  
  
Seth freaks out, trying to fight, trying to escape, but the guards' hold on him is unbreakable, and they haul him down the corridor without appearing to notice his flailing.  
  
“See you on the other side,” the punk calls quietly after him.  
  
Seth never gets a chance to respond.

  
  
Seth has always liked to think that before he dies, he’ll be calm and dignified. No screaming for mercy from God, no crying that he deserved more time. He’ll just nod, accept it, and then he’ll be gone.  
  
Reality is, as always, a cruel bitch.  
  
As he’s dragged off to whatever fate they have in store for him, Seth rapidly turns into an incoherent mess, alternating between begging for mercy and screaming for help.  
  
His captors, like good robots, aren’t even fazed.  
  
Finally, they stop in front of a door, one of the robot guards knocks, and it opens to reveal a tall woman in a lab coat. She’s holding a small white box, and her eyes are flat and lifeless.  
  
“You took your time,” she says irritably, and then she notices the state Seth's in. “Oh. Wonderful. Another whining little baby. Hold him still, for Pete’s sake.”  
  
The guards’ grip on Seth goes from ‘hard’ to ‘iron’, and he keeps struggling, but to no avail.

He screams.  
  
“I said, hold him still!” the woman snaps. “And shut him up!”  
  
Seth screams once more before the guards force him to his knees and slap a hand over his mouth.  
  
Pain blazes in the side of his neck, and the world goes black.

 

 _"We've got him sedated, at least. Why do the useful ones always have to make so much noise? It's just so_  annoying."

_"I agree. You'd think they'd try to pull themselves together."_

_“Anyway, that’s the preparations done. Nothing invasive, just the foundations for the later work. Have we decided what we’re going to do with him? We can’t do anything major unless you’ve decided.”_

_“Oh, yeah. I'll just get us some coffee, and then I'll tell you all about it…”_  

_"Coffee? Great. I take mine with milk, but no sugar."_

_"Milk, no sugar. Got it. Back in a sec."_

 

  
One of the most crushing feelings in the world is believing that you’re dead, feeling that utter relief of knowing that nothing matters now, that all the pain you've ever felt is over and done with, that you are free of everything that weighed you down, and then realising that you are not, in fact, dead. 

Seth opens his eyes to blinding white light, light that sears his eyes and makes him cry out. He shuts his eyes quickly, and smiles.  
  
At first, he thinks he’s dead. He’s never been religious, but it makes sense that if he’s dead, maybe he’s seeing a god, or an angel, or some kind of spirit, or maybe the gateway to an afterlife.  
  
Then again, that doesn’t make sense. He’s not religious, so why would he see any of those things?  
  
Well, maybe there’s only one afterlife, and it applies to everyone no matter what they believe…  
  
Seth debates comparative religion in the depths of his mind for a while. He’s a little dizzy, and he doesn’t feel like getting up yet.  
  
He’s dead, it can wait.  
  
Finally, he tentatively opens his eyes. The light hurts, but after a few more attempts, he manages to get his eyelids to stay open.  
  
His arms feel like overcooked spaghetti, so it takes him a while to push himself up to a sitting position.  
  
A very unpleasant sight meets his eyes, and he has to ask himself a most unwelcome question: if he’s dead, why has he woken up to a cell that’s almost identical to the one he was in before?  
  
 _No_ , Seth thinks hopelessly.  
  
He manages to raise a hand to rub his eyes, and pain blazes into life all over his body.  
  
 _Please, God,_ no _._

He wants it to be over. He wants it all to be over so much it hurts.

It's not over.  
  
This cell is empty except for him, but the place is trashed. Several of the beds have been knocked over, one of the crates is nothing more than a pile of broken planks and ripped clothing, and there’s a stain on the floor, like something bleeding was dragged out of the cell.  
  
Seth shudders, instinctively edging away from that stain, even though it makes more pain flare up his back and along his thighs.  
  
He isn’t dead, that’s for sure. Unless this is Hell, but it doesn’t seem to resemble any depiction of Hell he’s ever heard about.  
  
Looking around him, Seth realises that he’s wrong: he may not be dead, but this is certainly is Hell.  
  
Because if he’s not dead, then his captors must have some plan for him. And contemplating what they might have in store for him is going to give Seth even more nightmares.  
  
His eyes move back to the debris, and he can imagine the events that took place only too well: the guards coming for a prisoner; the prisoner putting up such a fight that it ended with the prisoner being dragged out of the cell by their legs, bleeding.   
  
But what kind of prisoner could put up that good a fight against such heavily armed guards?  
  
Seth wonders if they put him in here as a warning: _don’t try to fight, or we’ll make you bleed._ Or maybe it’s psychological warfare- they want him to feel worthless, like he’s not important enough to get a cell that doesn’t look like a shithole, so he’ll be more co-operative in the hopes of getting things like a clean cell.  
  
Footsteps sound down the hallway, and Seth looks up. Once he’s brushed his hair out of his eyes, he can see who it is.  
  
Eight guards walk down the hallway. Four are watchful, their weapons out. Three are carrying another prisoner, a short, fair-haired man who seems to be unconscious. The last is, for some reason, carrying a large tray. They’re lead by a small woman with a very stern expression, who’s wearing a white coat over her dark shirt and pants and glasses on her thin face.  
  
Seth has a strong feeling that drawing their attention would be a bad idea, so he keeps very quiet.  
  
One of the guards unlocks the door, and the woman in the white coat marches in, looks around and sniffs. “Most inadequate,” she says. “I realise that there has been no time to do a proper clean-up, but you’d think the directors would have got someone out here by now. Very well.”  
  
She points to the only other bed that isn’t broken, turned over or hopelessly rumpled. “Put him there.”  
  
She steps out of the way, and the guards carry the prisoner inside and unceremoniously dump him on the bed.  
  
The woman steps forward and performs some kind of brisk examination on him, feeling for a pulse and peeling back an eyelid. Finally, she steps back. “He’ll be fine.”  
  
She turns to the guard with the tray and points to Seth’s bed. “Put it there.”  
  
The guard sets the tray down, and the woman sniffs again. “Good. Let’s go.”  
  
“Please.” Seth finds his voice and musters the courage to speak. “Please, can you tell me-”  
  
None of them even look at him, and the door slams shut on his words.  
  
Seth watches them walk away from him silently, and then immediately turns to the other man.  
  
He seems to be sleeping naturally, and Seth can’t see any wounds. He tries to wake him, but nothing works.  
  
Maybe he’s sedated, Seth concludes. In which case, there's no point in trying any further. 

So not only is he not dead, he's stuck in a place that looks like it's from a horror movie and the only other person with him is asleep and won't wake up.

This has to be the worst day of his life.

 

  
Seth is utterly terrified now- well, somehow he's even more terrified than he was before. He has no idea where he is, why he’s here, or why he’s not dead.  
  
He also has no idea what’s happening, why he’s in pain, or if he’ll ever get out.  
  
All he knows is that the only person on his side is him.  
  
So once he feels up to it, he gets up and goes to the door.  
  
He’s no locksmith, sadly. The door and the wall are the classic prison getup of vertical bars, but they’re solid and don’t budge.  
  
Seth casts the occasional glance up at the cameras as he runs his fingers over the door, but there’s no immediate repercussions, so he keeps going.  
  
After a while, he’s looked over every inch of the door and walls and concluded three things: first, the door needs some kind of key; second, without a key, there’s no way he could get out without the help of either Nightcrawler or Juggernaut (preferably both); and third, he has no idea what kind of key is required.  
  
Well, fuck.  
  
Seth turns his attention to the rest of the cell, but he’s reluctant to investigate too much. The pain in his body makes lifting, reaching, twisting, or making sudden movements a very bad idea. In addition, the broken crate means that there’s splinters and fragments of wood all over the floor, and the small mirror in the bathroom was broken during the fight, leaving glass shards all over the floor.

So, no dice.

Seth’s not feeling that hungry, but it seems like the only option he’s got left. He doesn’t really pay attention to what he’s eating, and that’s why he only notices how drowsy he is once he’s finished the food and put the tray on the ground.  
  
The last thing he does before he passes out is vaguely wonder why they drugged his food.  
  
Not that he’ll ever get an answer.

 

  
 _“Very versatile, this one.”_

_“That he is. Why did we put him_ there _, though?”_

_“Right now, we're not doing so well in the free space department. Xi’s going to be doing some clearing out of the dead weight once he wakes up, and some of the others will do just as well- Delta and Phi are doing great. But we didn’t have time to clean this cell up before we put Tau and Beta in there. They're both asleep now, so we’ll get it done soon.”_

_“Oh, I see.”_

_“Why are we waiting, incidentally?”_

_“Mike’s dicking us around. Said he’d decided what to do, but no, he’s got a new idea now. Moron.”_

_“How’s Angelo doing with the countermeasure?”_

_“It’s hard to say. He’s got the basic idea, but he thinks it’ll need to be fixed to a wall or something.”_

_“Which would make it vulnerable once the subjects figure it out.”_

_“Exactly. But he’s trying new ideas.”_

_“Good. So now what- oh. Mike. What’s up?”_

_“I just had the best idea for what to do with Tau.”_

_“Oh, boy. Well, tell us all, and if it involves multi-million dollar surgery and bio-augmentation again…”_

_“Nope. This one’s better.”_

_“I can’t_ wait _to hear this.”_

 

_“You want to do WHAT? No! Are you joking? Absolutely not!”_

  _"Oh come on, Sal, don't be like that..."_

  
  
Seth opens his eyes to what looks like a brand-new cell.  
  
For all he knows, it is.  
  
The other man’s still there and still asleep, but apart from that, everything’s changed.  
  
It’s a nice change, though. They have a clean floor and a bathroom he can walk into without fear of getting glass shards in his feet.  
  
The pain’s lessened a bit, so Seth gets up, trudges over to the bathroom, relieves himself, washes his hands, splashes his face. He stares into the mirror, and sighs.  
  
He looks like shit, predictably. Even after all the sleep he’s ~~been forced to have~~ had, his eyes are sunken, his hair oily and coarse.  
  
So he takes a shower, washes his hair, and lets the hot water soothe him into a false feeling of calm.  
  
It’s better than the alternative.  
  
  
  
Once he gets out of the shower, he throws on some clean clothes and tries to wake up the sleeping man.  
  
He fails.  
  
Rapidly becoming bored, Seth walks around the room, looking for something, anything, to occupy his mind with.  
  
He fails at that too.  
  
Finally, he lies on his bed, hands behind his head, and waits.  
  
And waits.  
  
And waits.  
  
He’s waiting for a long time.

  
  
It has to be at least an hour later when Seth is startled out of his light doze by the sound of footsteps. He sits up and groans.  
  
“Oh,  _fuck..."_  
  
Marching down the corridor are two squads.  
  
Wait.

Two?  
  
Before Seth has time to blink, the door is opened and he’s pulled out and held tightly in the grasp of one squad. The sleeping man finally, _finally_ starts to wake as he’s pulled from his bed, but before he or Seth can actually say anything, they’re whisked away in opposite directions.  
  
Seth has no idea how to react. On the one hand, given that they didn’t kill him last time, maybe they won’t kill him this time.  
  
On the other hand, maybe last time was a fluke.  
  
This time, his trip is much longer. He gets led down corridor after corridor after corridor, past other teams of guards escorting prisoners, past a couple of people in lab coats or casual clothes, and past a group of guards carrying full trash bags that stink of blood.  
  
Seth almost throws up at the sight, but they’ve turned a corner before he can really process it. The guards keep walking, and after a while, his feet start hurting, but he knows they won’t stop to rest.  
  
How big is this place, anyway?  
  
And where the fuck are they, underground?  
  
The guards pull him around yet another fucking corner, and finally, _finally_ they stop in front of a door.  
  
One of the guards knocks, and after a few seconds, the door opens.  
  
Seth sees someone in a lab coat, a stark white room behind them, and then something liquid gets sprayed onto his face and the world vanishes.

  
  
 _“Quite a good sedative, that.”_

_“Oh, yes. It works brilliantly on the more… troublesome subjects. Only problem is, it doesn’t discriminate, and a little goes a long way with this stuff. It needs more refining, it’s not quite finished yet.”_

_“Isn’t everything? Anyway, let’s get him on the gurney and to surgery, already. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”_

  
  
  
_Seth is dreaming._

_He feels like he’s swimming, but he can’t feel the water. His vision is blurry and unfocused, and he blinks repeatedly, but it won’t clear._

_He takes a breath, and relaxes. No point in trying to see, he guesses._

_He closes his eyes, willing the dream to end, or change, or do_  something _else_ -

_-and pain stabs into the side of his neck like he got hit with a chainsaw._

_He gasps, forces his eyes open, and for a second, everything’s clear._

_White on white on white. Red on silver. Blue on skin._

_Oh,_ no. _Oh,_ God _no._

_The scalpel slices into Seth’s neck, and he fights the chains that make up his body, fights to scream, to move, to do something, anything, other than lie there while he gets cut open like a fish._

_He can’t move._

Help, _he screams in his mind._ Please, God, help me.

_The scalpel cuts again, and again, and again, a little deeper each time, and Seth screams again and again and again-_

_-and his mouth opens at last, and some of his pain and horror escapes it._

_The surgeon freezes. “What the fuck?”_

_“He’s awake!” someone shouts. “But, doc, you said the anaesthetic-”_

_“Fucking idiots!” the doctor snarls. “Giving me this half-tested shit! Oh, it’ll work perfectly, it doesn’t matter that we haven’t fully tested it or got it approved… they can handle the fallout from this! Give me the fucking syringe already…”_

_Frozen pain slides into Seth’s wrist, and he spirals downward into soft, sweet oblivion, the darkness drowning out his senses._

_It can't come fast enough._

 

  
 _“Is it done?”_

_“Is what done?”_

_“Is Tau done yet?”_

_“Apart from that monumental fuck-up with the anaesthetic… yes, we are technically done with Tau. Technically."_

_“All right, what do we do with him now?”_

_“First, we have to see how he’s reacting after he wakes up. If he’s too traumatised, we might have to keep him sedated before we try using him for anything. We can’t throw him away, he’s too valuable.”_

_“So, we just wait and see.”_

_“That’s right.”_

_“And Xi? What about Xi?”_

_“Angelo worked out the countermeasure problems.”_

_“We’re still keeping it in the cell, right? Unless we can, like, implant it into Xi?”_

_“Into Xi? No, I don’t think that’s possible. But yes, we are keeping it in the cell, and hopefully it’ll be out of Xi’s reach. He probably won’t be able to find it, anyway. It’s very small.”_

_“Can we reproduce it yet?”_

_“Well, this one’s the first model. We have to see if it even works. Remember, the aim is to control Xi. If that fails, then it’s back to the drawing board.”_

_“I hear you.”_

_“Look, this is getting pointless. Come over to my office and I’ll walk you through our plans where we can both see them.”_

_“I’ll be there in five minutes.”_

  
  
  
Seth wakes up screaming.  
  
He thrashes around in the bed, getting hopelessly tangled in the sheets, until he finally registers the feeling of cloth. 

A bed, not a gurney. No doctors, no stark white-on-white.

He’s safe.

Inasmuch as anyone can be safe here.

He collapses with a sigh, and tries to stop shaking.

He fails.  
  
His skin is crawling, his breath coming in gasps, and he crawls under the sheets and curls up in a ball, his heart hammering in his chest.  
  
He wants to die. He wants to vanish, pass out, be anywhere but here.  
  
So Seth shuts his eyes and tries not to think.  
  
  
  
 _“Is that… good?”_

_“What, on a scale of mildly shaken to full-blown PTSD? It’s… well. He’ll probably recover. It could be worse. I say, give him another day or so to recover, and then I think it’s time to see how he goes with someone else.”_   
  
_“Any ideas?”_

_“A few, but I’d need to run it by Andi and Eric.”_  
  
  
  
Seth ends up falling asleep under the covers. He wakes up in the middle of the night, the lights off, and he actually feels safe.  
  
It’s night, so they probably won’t do any tests. All the personnel have probably gone home. If they have homes. If they're not all living in this fucked up place.  
  
Nobody’s going to know he’s awake. Nobody’s going to care.  
  
He stretches out on the bed, fidgeting and turning over and over. After the waking nightmare that was the failed anaesthetic, he needs to know that he can move.  
  
He never wants to be frozen like that again.  
  
He laces his fingers together, squeezes, feels the warmth of his skin and the pressure of his fingers. It’s a good feeling.  
  
He brushes his hair out of his eyes and pauses, his fingers touching something on his forehead that just feels _off_.  
  
 _What... what the hell is that?_  
  
Slowly, he traces his finger over the anomaly again and again, and after a while, he finally realises what he’s touching.  
  
 _Oh, God._  
  
It’s a line of tiny stitches. To his finger, they feel like a raised, bumpy line, but Seth knows stitches when he feels them.  
  
He sits up, going cold all over, and slowly strips.  
  
Then he runs his fingers over every inch of his skin he can reach, and finds more and more lines of stitches.  
  
They’re on his back, his chest, his head, his shoulders, his neck, his stomach. Not on his legs or his arms, but that doesn’t actually make it better.  
  
He traces the lines again and again, imagining them in his head, trying to visualise what they’d look like if he could see them.  
  
 _I must look like Frankenstein’s monster,_ he concludes.  
  
  
  
 _“So the countermeasure’s ready, Angelo?”_

_“Oh, yes, it's certainly usable. Only problem is, once we turn it on, that’s it. It’s out of our hands after that.”_

_“You can’t even turn it off?”_

_“No. And before you ask, I’ve busted my arse trying to find a better way, but no dice. This is the best we’ve got: an early, unpredictable model that can't be controlled, can't be turned off and will probably break in the first five minutes. Of course, given that I was practically held at gunpoint and told to make it in such a short time and with so few resources...”_

_“All right, all right. I get it. Eric, Angelo, this is the plan: I think Tau needs some company, so let’s throw him in with Xi. Angelo, you turn the countermeasure on just before Tau gets to the cell. Keep the guards there to make sure nothing goes wrong. If the countermeasure doesn’t work, or if it breaks, Eric, you get Tau out of there as fast as you can and trank Xi. We’ll talk it through from there.”_

_“Got it, Andi.”_

_"All right."_  
  
  
  
Seth is woken up by the _thud_ of the door opening. He sits up, confused, and two guards grab his shoulders and haul him out before he realises what’s happening.  
  
They cuff him in an instant and shove him onwards. Stumbling, trying to keep up, he forgets that his captors are robots and babbles questions at them until the silence finally penetrates his confusion.

His brain is mostly on-line by the time they reach their destination, but Seth’s still worried as fuck. He can see the cell ahead of him, see that there’s someone inside, and he’s… making a bed?  
  
Seth shrugs inwardly. There are worse things his prospective cellmate could be doing. At least he's keeping things orderly, instead of walking around in circles, ranting about conspiracies and talking about how they'd all been abducted by the Illuminati. 

Yeah... not one of the more likeable cellmates he's had.

The guy hears them approach and turns toward them, and then he just… freezes, like he got turned into a statue.

Seth's unnerved, but he has no room to react.  
  
The guards, seemingly not noticing, open the door, uncuff Seth and give him a hard push to the back.  
  
And as Seth walks in, his cellmate topples over like a tree being felled, hitting the ground with a nasty-sounding _thud_.  
  
Seth does his best to not freak out. Instead, he drops to his knees and feels for a pulse. He finds it, but it’s slow, too slow, and the man’s breath is sluggish and shallow. He looks up at the guards. “Get a doctor! He needs help!”  
  
The guards don’t move.  
  
Seth looks up at them incredulously. “This is not normal! He could die! Get a fucking doctor already!”  
  
It's almost a miracle: one of the guards actually acts like a person. He... she... ze... turns to another, who nods firmly. The first guard then pulls out a smartphone and starts typing into it. Finally, he/she/ze hits enter and shrugs.  
  
Seth has no idea whether they’ve just called for a doctor, an executioner or a mad scientist, but all he can do is wait. He doesn’t know enough about medicine to do anything to help this man, and he doesn’t have another choice.  
  
He manages to haul the man up and onto the bed. He’s tall, over six feet at least, and he’s quite heavy, though it seems to mostly be muscle. Once Seth’s got him on the bed, he looks down at the floor and winces at the drops of blood where his cellmate’s head impacted. It doesn't _look_ like there was any serious damage to his skull or his brain, but Seth's loath to make any firm judgements.  
  
The sound of shoes clicking on the tiled floor makes him look up, and he stays on guard. The pair walking toward him don’t look particularly threatening, but in this place, there’s no such thing as harmless.  
  
The man’s tall and amiable, brown-haired and wearing blue. The woman’s a head shorter than him and plump, long blonde hair framing her face and a bright green shirt contrasting with her black skirt. They walk past the guards as if they’re not there and into the cell.  
  
Seth looks up at them, hoping like hell that they actually intend to help.  
  
The man smiles, for some reason, and he has a deceptively kind smile, one just full of compassion and interest.

Seth wonders if that smile has ever been genuine.  
  
His voice has a British accent, but Seth can’t place the exact location. “Well, this certainly is a problem.” He turns to the woman. “Any ideas?”  
  
The woman purses her lips, taps her foot, and finally sighs. “We’ll have to do a more thorough examination. Get the guards to take him to the examination room, we’ll check him over there. Shouldn’t take long.”  
  
The man nods and gestures to the guards.  
  
They’re all gone in a few seconds, and Seth sits down on the now-vacant bed with a _thump_ , and wonders what the fuck he should do now.  
  
Lacking other options, he decides to explore.  
  
  
  
 _“Olivia? Found anything yet?”_

_“Yes, but it's_ _not good.”_

_“Hit me. Ow, fuck!”_

_“You asked for it.”_

_“I didn’t mean- oh, for the love of God…”_

_“All right. There’s good news, and there's… oh, fuck it. The countermeasure works, but it works too well. What we wanted was something to control Xi, and by extension, the others. What we’ve made isn’t good enough yet. All it does is shut down the additions. And unfortunately, we can’t turn off the countermeasure or improvise ways to alter it. So we've rendered Xi harmless, but we can't control him."_

_“I see. What’s Xi’s condition?”_

_“His head isn’t badly injured by the fall, it should heal up soon. However, the additions we’ve made have been shut down. As a result, I would diagnose Xi as being physically exhausted and needing time to recuperate. In theory, he should wake up once his body has healed sufficiently, but without the additions, that could take anywhere from a few days to a week. He’ll probably feel weakened and disoriented, as he won’t be able to use the additions, so in essence, he's going to be useless for a while.”_

_“So what do we do? Keep him here?”_

_“No, we should keep him in the cell. His condition isn’t bad enough to warrant constant supervision, and we do have cameras in the cell. Bring him back here three times a day and we’ll check up on him and feed him. But make sure it’s high-energy, high-nutrition. The best we’ve got.”_

_“Got it.”_

_"Once he wakes up, we'll run more tests. We need to know exactly what the countermeasure's done to him. I'll get on to Angelo, see if he can come up with anything. You just keep doing what you're doing."_

_"Roger that."_

 

  
By the time he hears footsteps, Seth has explored every inch of the cell and come to a few conclusions: first, he is going to read every single one of those books. Twice. Second, he needs half an hour with that mirror so he can see the stitches, once he can work up the guts to actually look. Third, he really hopes that somebody takes out the trash soon. And fourth, he wants to know why he suddenly rates a cell that’s a hell of a lot nicer than the other ones.

To tell the truth, he wasn’t expecting his new cellmate to return. But here he is, being carried into the cell by the guards.

They set him down on his bed, and the blonde woman walks in behind them. She looks over the cell, nods, and turns to go.  
  
Seth thinks it over and finally shrugs: what's he got to lose?

“What happened to him?”  
  
It’s a miracle. She pauses, turns around, and actually _answers_ him. “Do you have much medical knowledge?”  
  
He's so startled by actually getting a response that he stares at her dumbly for a second. “Uh. No.”  
  
She nods. “I’ll simplify it for you, then. He has gone into something like a coma, because he is completely exhausted. He should awaken at some point in the near future, somewhere between three days and a week. We will attend to his needs. All we require of you is your patience.”  
  
“My… my patience?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“But…”  
  
“In addition,” she says crisply, “I would like to express my sincere apologies for the mishap that occurred during your surgery. We have taken steps to ensure that it will not happen again.”  
  
Seth blinks, rubs his eyes, and then looks up at her, his expression hardening. “I’m sorry, _what?_ ”  
  
“I said…”  
  
“Let me get this straight,” Seth says, so furious it’s all he can do to stay coherent. “You abduct me, torture me, hold me prisoner and do God knows what to me without my knowledge or permission, and now you’re actually  _apologising_ because you fucked up the anaesthetic? Of all the things to apologise for, _that's_ what you pick? What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”  
  
He’s furious, eyes flashing, breathing hard, but she doesn’t turn a hair. “We do have to have some standards, Subject Tau.”  
  
Before he can respond, she turns around and leaves.  
  
“Bullshit,” Seth snarls after her. 

She doesn't even look back at him.  
  
Once she’s turned the corner, Seth flops down on the next bed and sighs, trying to calm down.  
  
It doesn’t work.  
  
He needs a distraction.  
  
So he sits up and inspects his new cellmate.  
  
He didn’t get much of a chance to actually look at the guy, given the whole suddenly-passing-out thing. But, now that he actually has that chance, he’s quite intrigued.  
  
For a start, the guy’s even taller than Seth thought. His hair is a blend of brown and blonde that makes it hard to classify, and he’s pretty hot, in a rakish way.  
  
So that probably means he’s bad news.  
  
What worries Seth, though, is that the guy’s pulse is so slow, and he breathes deeply, but so infrequent as to be worrying.  
  
Seth knows he has basically no right to talk about medical matters, but he’s pretty sure that someone in this state should be on a hospital bed, hooked up to all kinds of machines that go ‘bing’.  
  
Still, it’s not like he actually gets a say in the matter.  
  
  
  
That first day, Seth starts working his way through the enormous book he finds in the crate that holds every Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Conan Doyle. When his eyes start aching, he paces around the cell. He works out, he checks on his unconscious cellmate, and he stays out of the way when the guards come to take said cellmate away/bring him back.  
  
On the whole, it’s better than constantly being dragged out by the guards, but it’s _so fucking boring_.  
  
By the time the lights go off, Seth is bored out of his mind. He gets into bed, closes his eyes, and wishes that he had his iPod.

And a computer. And a charger for both. And the internet.

OK, maybe not.

  
  
That night, Seth dreams of being paralysed again, forced to watch helplessly as he’s vivisected alive. He wakes up tangled in his sheets, flailing around and screaming, and it takes a while for the effects of the dream to wear off.  
  
At least they took the trash out. Even better, they’ve given Seth his own clothes, more sheets, his own toiletries, more books and his very own breakfast tray.  
  
It’s just like Christmas. In Hell.  
  
Once he’s eaten, Seth takes off his shirt, walks into the bathroom, and stands in front of the mirror, staring at his feet for five minutes before he works up the courage to look.  
  
Much to his relief, the stitches are very small. If he couldn’t feel them, he’d probably never know they were there. He guesses that if they leave scars, they’ll be very thin and quite pale, not really that noticeable.  
  
That being said, while they’re not big, they’re _long_ , and it freaks Seth out.  
  
He goes back to reading. Thank God he likes books.  
  
  
  
Two more days pass, and nothing happens. By the end of it, Seth is bored out of his mind, and very reluctant to sleep. He’s still having nightmares, and his throat is getting hoarse from the shrieking.  
  
He’s also intimately familiar with the finer points of Sherlock Holmes.

(He decides to switch to Harper Lee next.)  
  
He’s still worried about his cellmate, but the guards keep taking him out and bringing him back in, and nothing seems to be happening.  
  
So Seth doesn’t quite register the significance at first when he glances over at his cellmate, and sees that his eyes are open.  
  
He has pretty eyes, Seth thinks absently. Pretty blue eyes.  
  
Then he realises what he’s looking at, and he nearly leaps to his feet.  
  
  
  
 _Dean has never felt so tired in his life._

_He has no idea what happened. One second, he was awake, then he was out of it, like someone drained all the life out of him._

_He feels like someone’s been drowning him for days, but in morphine, not water._

_And for the life of him, he has no idea what happened to the beast. He can’t hear it or sense it, and he thinks that if he tried to so much as get up and walk, he’d collapse in an instant._

_He drags his eyelids open, and a blurry image meets his eyes. He manages to blink a few times, and it slowly comes back into focus: his cell, and the new cellmate he saw before he passed out._

_Their eyes meet, and Dean flinches._

_He has nice eyes,_ _Dean thinks. Warm, dark, eyes. Even though he’s panicking. Why is he panicking?_

 _It takes Dean a few seconds to realise that this man, this stranger, is concerned. For_ him _._

_He’s nonplussed, to say the least._

_It happens slowly, like he’s trapped in a whirlpool, being pulled down to the bottom of the sea. He looks into the eyes of the first person to be genuinely concerned for him since he was abducted, and falls in love so hard that he feels like he’s done a belly flop onto concrete._

_Despite the exhaustion, he smiles._


	4. so i can pretend you love me like i love you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything goes so right... and then so wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said this was probably going to be a short chapter, so of course it ends up being longer than chapter 2. Damn. Yeah, anyway, here it is. Thank you very much for all your comments, I love them all. :) For the record, (according to Wikipedia) L7 and Haste the Day are the bands who did two of Dean and Seth's earlier themes (Dean's was 'Shitlist', Seth's was 'American Love'). Hope this one's good.

Seth has no idea what to do.  
  
He knows the guards (or the lab coats) have to have seen what's happened by now, so they’ll be on their way in a few minutes. Hopefully. But those few minutes could be vital.  
  
In fact, he really, really wishes that he knew first aid right now.  
  
As it is, all he can do is hope to whatever god (if any) is listening that he doesn’t royally fuck this up.  
  
“Can you hear me?” he tries, and winces. It’s probably a really stupid way to start, but at least the guy nods.  
  
“And I guess you can understand me… obviously.” The guy nods again, a faint smile on his face, and Seth flushes. God, even his barely-conscious cellmate thinks he’s an idiot. He’s doing _so_ well so far.  
  
“Are you in pain at all?” Seth asks.  
  
The guy shakes his head very slightly, and Seth sighs in relief, before realising that for all he knows, the guy’s sedated out of his mind and he’s got severe internal bleeding.  
  
“The doctors should be here soon, I think,” Seth says. “Just stay put and… Christ, that’s stupid, where would you go? Sorry, that’s really fucking stupid, I’m rambling…”  
  
Seth looks behind him, frantically hoping that somebody else is going to show up and save him from the awkwardness. 

Of course, nobody does.  
  
His cellmate is still smiling, and Seth feels his cheeks get even more flushed, if that’s possible. God, why does he have to fuck up all the time around the cute guys?  
  
Wait, no, that’s wrong, because this guy is sick and he just woke up and Seth doesn’t even know his name and- fuck. OK. _Stop digging the hole, Seth,_ he thinks to himself.  
  
He is cute, though. Hell, he’s even sexy. And that is a totally inappropriate thought and he is going to _stop_ thinking that _right now_ , thank you-  
  
Oh thank God, the guards are here. And that's a sentence he thought he'd never think,  _ever._  
  
His cellmate looks faintly annoyed, but he doesn’t try to resist or struggle as he’s whisked away to God knows where. With him gone, Seth sits down on his bed with a _thump_  and tries to stop blushing so much.  
  
Even before he got kidnapped, he’d been single for a while. A long while, to be honest. He hasn’t dated anyone for ages, so it’s perfectly natural that he’s noticing how very attractive his cellmate is-  
  
Oh, fuck it. He’s hot and Seth’s horny and desperate. That’s the honest version. Even though he does his best to ignore that side of his mind.  
  
Or, to be more succinct, the Id can go fuck itself.  
  
OK, it’d probably like that, but that’s not the point.  
  
_Let’s get realistic_ , Seth tells himself. Provided that his cellmate actually _returns_ , Seth will be polite, civilised and helpful. He will aid his cellmate in any and every way possible, especially since he's not in the best of health, and he will not do anything remotely inappropriate. They need to work together if they want to lengthen their lifespans, after all.  
  
Of course, that’s all provided that said cellmate isn’t a psychopath and won’t try to kill him as soon as Seth lets his guard down. Or, provided that they don't get separated. That’s always possible.  
  
Seth exhales and sighs. Fretting won’t solve anything. Instead, he searches through the crate, picks up a copy of _Harry Potter and the Chamber Of Secrets_ , catches the first two chapters as they fall out, puts them back in and lies down on his bed.

 

_Dean is pretty damn annoyed. He strongly objects to being dragged away from cute men who seem to give a fuck about him. They’re pretty thin on the ground right now._

_Well, OK, they're usually pretty thin on the ground._

_He has no idea what happened, only that_ something _fucked up the beast. He can feel it in the back of his head, like a sleeping dog that’s lying on his foot and won’t wake up, but the exhaustion is worrying him. He’s obviously been asleep for some time, and he’s never felt this tired after waking up._ Never.

_They don’t go too far away from the cell, in the end. The guards carry him through a door and into what looks like a cross between a doctor’s surgery and a lab from a sci-fi/horror movie. It’s full of people in lab coats, and few of them even look up from whatever they’re doing as Dean is carried in and unceremoniously set down- nearly dropped, in fact- on the chair._

_He tries to sit up and look around, but before he can, heavy metal restraints click into place over his wrists and ankles, and two long, similarly heavy bands slide over his shoulders and knees, effectively immobilising him._

_Wow, this isn’t fucking creepy at all._

_If the beast were awake, Dean_ knows _he could get out of these restraints in a second. It’s not like he_ needs _the beast, if what he did to his old cellmate is any indication. But he’s so tired he can barely muster the strength to move his wrist, let alone summon strength he doesn’t have to rip through solid steel._

_Fuck. Looks like he’s stuck for now._

_All he can do is wait, so that’s what he does._

 

_As it turns out, he isn’t waiting for long, and that's damn good, because it’s taking all he's got just to keep his eyes open. A tall woman with very short black hair and brown eyes comes into his view, and she looks at him curiously, but in a way that freaks him out just a little- like he’s not even a person, he’s just a curiosity to examine._

Fuck that, _Dean thinks._ And fuck you too, bitch.

_She’s carrying a leather bag, and she sets it down on a stool next to him. “Can you understand me?” she asks Dean. She's speaking English clearly and fluently, but she has a slight but noticeable accent that Dean can't place._

_Dean wants to say something sarcastic, but his eyelids flutter and for a second, the world starts fading, so he blinks himself back to consciousness and nods instead._

_He really would have preferred it if it was the cute guy saying it, like last time._

_“Good. Are you in pain at all?”_

_Dean shakes his head._

_“Tired?”_

_Dean nods as emphatically as he can._

_She purses her lips. “As expected. I’m afraid that the feelings of exhaustion will not go away altogether, but they can be allayed somewhat.”_

Yeah, but are you actually going to _do_ it? _Dean thinks._

_Somehow, he doubts that she- or anyone- will._

_She doesn’t continue. Instead, she opens her bag. Dean tenses up a little, but the items she takes out are standard medical instruments: thermometer, stethoscope, stuff like that._

_Dean wonders why, in a place that looks like this, they don’t already have that kind of equipment waiting for her. Maybe this doctor just really likes to only use her own stuff._

_Or maybe not._

_He does his best to stay alert._

_What follows is the average doctor’s examination. Once it’s over, the doctor calls over a couple of the lab coat minions and starts talking to them._

_Dean strains his ears to hear. After a bit, he concludes that the doctor isn’t deliberately trying to keep him from hearing, she’s just got a quiet voice. From what he can tell, he’s pretty much healthy._

_Dean stupidly supposes that he’s going to go back to the cell now, but no such luck. What follows that is a series of tests that are unlike anything Dean has ever experienced, and each one makes him more and more irritated._

_They’re pretty fucking painful- because_  of course _they are-_ _and he keeps falling asleep and being abruptly and loudly awakened._

_Dean really hates it when people wake him up._

_By the time they’re_ finally _done, Dean is ready to rip some heads off._

_Well, OK, maybe not that extreme. He’d shout a lot, though._

_OK, he’d do it if he actually had the energy to so much as walk by himself._

_Instead, he does what Dean Ambrose does best: be a belligerent asshole with a mouth that won't close._

_“Are we fucking done?” he asks as loudly as he can manage. “Because seriously, I’ve got some shit to do, if you’re all finished making me your lab rat.”_

_The doctor ignores him, but some of the random minions look up from their work, startled, and one of the doctor’s flunkies stares at him like she can’t believe that he’s talking._

_That pisses Dean off even more. He’s a_ person _, not a guinea pig._

_“Yeah, that’s right,” he drawls. “I mean, maybe you can’t imagine me having a life outside of this bullshit, but you’re at the bottom of my to-do list.”_

_He looks the flunky straight in the eye and winks. “Sorry, darlin’, but I mean that literally. Try not to cry about it, you'll wake me up, and I need my beauty sleep.”_

_She looks confused, like she has no idea how to react. He grins at her, and she opens her mouth to respond, but a sharp word from the doctor has her back to work in a second._

_Dean rolls his eyes. “Jesus Christ, really?”_

_Fuck it. They all think he’s harmless. Maybe it’s time he found out just how strong he is without the beast._

_He flexes his fingers, trying to look inconspicuous, and pushes against the restraint on his right wrist, summoning every scrap of strength he's got to do it. It’s in a good position: his hands are free, but there’s nothing for him to grab, and he’d be able to put more strength into breaking out if his hands were restrained._

_Still, if he’s as good as he thinks he is, that shouldn’t matter._

_Unfortunately, there’s one thing he doesn’t think of: visibility._

_Some kinds of metal are malleable, but it's not easy to change their shape without decent tools. When it comes to solid, generally not-malleable metals like steel, forcing one’s way through them with only one's bare hands isn’t something that can generally be done without drawing attention to oneself._

_As weak as he feels, either the restraints are weak or he's stronger than the fucking Hulk, because he forces his right wrist_ through _the restraint without a problem. His hand comes free, and the movement doesn’t draw much attention, but even a little is too much- and it makes a_ sound _that has him cringing for what feels like forever._

_Just one minion hears it, but his reaction is both loud and obvious, exactly what Dean didn't want. He jumps backwards, hitting his head on a cupboard, and screams ‘CODE RED!’ as loudly as he can._

Ah, fuck, _Dean thinks as everyone turns around and starts reacting._

_He goes for broke._

_Dean’s not stupid. He knows there’s no way he can make it out of the lab. Hell, he probably can’t make it off the chair._

_But he_ can _make life just that little bit harder for them._

_And right now, there's nothing he wants to do more._

_He manages to get his left hand free, and then he grins._

_“Come on,” he drawls. “One guy chained to a chair, what’s so scary?”_

_Most of the minions are too busy running and screaming to answer._

_Dean can’t help it. Despite his exhaustion, he laughs and laughs and laughs._

_He’s still laughing when he takes his first breath of the gas flooding into the room and slumps back against the chair, completely out of it._

 

 

Seth’s five chapters in when he hears footsteps and looks up. The guards are back, and they’re led by the blonde woman. His cellmate is unconscious _again_ , and the only thing that stops Seth from rolling his eyes is his concern.  
  
Once the guards have put the other man down and turned to leave, Seth speaks up, hoping the blonde woman will answer him again. “What’s wrong with him?”  
  
She pauses, looks from the guards to him, thinks for a second, and then obviously decides to respond. “Nothing. He became extremely unruly and aggressive, so he was sedated. It should wear off in about half an hour.”  
  
Seth wants to snarl back something derisive about how the estimate would be great if he actually had a clock or a watch, but he manages to hold his tongue. “You’re sure? He isn’t sick or anything? He was asleep, or in a coma, or whatever, for fucking _days_ -”  
  
She smirks. “Sick? Don’t be ridiculous. He can’t get sick. He is immune to all forms of illness.”  
  
Seth has to stop for a second to process that. “Immune to _all_ illnesses? You mean, like, he regenerates?”  
  
There’s a patronising expression on her face, one Seth recognises as generally translating to ‘I’d explain more, but you’re far too stupid to understand even the most basic details’. She sighs, and responds in the kind of tone that really patronising adults use to speak to small children. “Well, yes, he can regenerate, but that is not what gives him the immunity. Suffice to say, we could give him dozens of deep cuts and throw him into a sewer, and not only would he heal in minutes, but he would not get so much as a stomach bug in the process.”  
  
Seth’s jaw drops. “That… that’s amazing.”  
  
She smiles, preens a little, looks very pleased. “Yes, it is. A true work of genius, even if I do say so myself.”  
  
Seth frowns. “But what happened to him? Why did he go into a coma?”  
  
She pauses, and then shrugs. “He reacted badly to a countermeasure we had set up in an attempt to control his violent behaviour. We’re working on changing it now.”  
  
“A countermeasure? Like what?”  
  
For a second, there’s a flicker of panic in her eyes, like she just realised that she said something wrong. “That is of no concern to you.”  
  
She turns to leave, and Seth calls after her. “But if it affected him this badly, can’t you just turn it off? What if it kills him?”  
  
She stops momentarily, but she doesn’t turn around. She just keeps walking.  
  
Seth never sees her again.

He supposes, later on, that they assigned her to another subject, or had her doing paperwork. Some kind of punishment for talking to him and telling him so much. 

He’s wrong.

He’s so, so, wrong.

 

  
_“Sarah, can I borrow you for a minute?”_

_The blonde frowns, typing quickly. “Can it wait, Andi? I’m busy.”_

_Andi shakes her head, her unruly ginger curls flying everywhere, getting in her eyes as always. “Sorry, but it’s urgent.”_

_Sarah sighs, saves her work, and follows Andi down the hallway._

_Oddly enough, though, they don’t go into Andi’s office. Instead, they walk past the conference room, and toward… Discussion Room Five?_

_“Andi? What’s going on?” Sarah asks uncertainly._

_“There’s been a bit of a disruption,” Andi replies amiably. “The team’s gathering to talk it over.”_

_Sarah pauses mid-step. “The_ whole _team? What, all five hundred of us?”_

_Andi laughs, her high voice echoing down the corridor. “No, no. Just the real movers and shakers.”_

_Sarah nods and keeps walking. “Oh, I see.”_

_There’s nothing unusual about what Andi’s saying. So why does Sarah feel so on edge?_

_They walk into the Discussion Room, and the so-called ‘movers and shakers’, about twenty total, all stop whatever they were doing and turn toward Andi._

_Discussion Room Five isn’t big. They save it for important discussions that need more space and/or time than the kind of discussion you’d have in an office. Sarah sits down between Mike and Olivia, and everyone watches as Andi sets up the projector screen._

_She hits a few buttons, and the screen goes dark._

_The team waits expectantly, and Andi purses her lips, laces her fingers together, her brown eyes glaring at her audience from behind her glasses._

_“I have called this meeting because there has been a major lapse in work ethic,” she says bluntly. “The video I am about to show you should explain everything. It will also serve as a reminder of exactly what we do and do not do while undertaking our mission.”_

_Everyone looks confused, but Andi doesn’t wait. She hits a button and steps aside, watching not the screen, but the team’s reactions._

_The screen brightens, snaps into focus, and Sarah freezes._

_On the screen, the guards carry Subject Xi into the cell, and Sarah’s right there, walking with them._

_The others look puzzled._

_Sarah bites back a shriek as she realises what's happening._

_And Andi smiles._

_When Sarah answers Tau, everyone turns to her, and their reactions are a mixture of horror, amazement and disbelief._

_“Sarah,” Eric breathes. “You_ didn’t _…”_

_Sarah stares at the table, palms sweating, cheeks flushed red._

_Once their first conversation is over, the video cuts to the second one, and Sarah can’t face it. She gets up and runs out of the room._

_Halfway down the corridor stand two guards, and Sarah skids to a halt when she sees them. Neither makes a move, and desperately clinging to hope, Sarah attempts to run past them._

_They grab her as soon as she’s in their range._

 

 

 _Andi rolls her eyes as Sarah flees._ Stupid woman. As if she’d actually make it out.

_Then again, Andi muses, Sarah never did think. She always thought with her pride first and her brain last, if at all._

_“Ahem,” she says quietly. Normally, she’d have everyone’s attention in a second, but they’re all too busy reacting like sheep to Sarah’s treachery._

_She rolls her eyes. Why, oh_ why _must I be surrounded by idiots?_

_Andi claps her hands. “Excuse me,” she says, and her voice isn’t loud, but it silences everyone in a second._

_“We still have another video to watch,” Andi says, and there's nothing menacing in her tone, but more than one person starts shaking._

_The door opens, and the two guards haul in Sarah, protesting frantically, her blue eyes wild with fear._

_“Sarah, Sarah,” Andi drawls. “You never did know when to keep your mouth shut, did you?”_

_She sighs. “Shut her up, will you? We’ve got a video to watch.”_

_One piece of duct tape later, they’re watching the second conversation in silence, though the team is visibly distraught._

_By the end of the video, they’re not distraught. They’re horrified._

_“Sarah,” Mike whispers. “You_ didn’t. _”_

_“You fucking idiot,” Eric snarls. “You told Tau!”_

_“One of the_ very few _people you were explicitly told never to talk to, and you tell him the one thing none of the subjects should have_ ever _found out?” Maria exclaims, her cheeks flushed with rage. “How stupid_ are _you?”_  
  
_Andi smiles slightly as she watches tears roll down Sarah’s cheeks, and she makes a small motion with her head._

_One of the guards tears the tape off of Sarah’s mouth, and immediately, she’s babbling apologies and pleas for mercy._

_“Sarah, do shut up,” Andi says once she's had enough._

_Given that it's Sarah, that doesn't take long._

_Sarah shuts up, at least, looking fearfully at her boss._

_“Normally, I’d be lenient,” Andi says. She considers her intentions, weighs up the pros and cons, and shrugs. No point in being merciful now._

_“Unfortunately for you, this is a supreme fuckup, to say the least. You could have ruined everything, Sarah._ Everything. _You understand, I can’t let this slide.”_

_“Don’t sack me,” Sarah begs. “Please, I’ll-”_

_Andi lets out a short bark of a laugh. “Sack you? Oh, Sarah, you’re underestimating just how important this is. No, I’m afraid that the penalty for something this big is much more permanent.”_

_“Wait,” Max says sharply, his eyes narrowing. “Andi, you can’t kill her.”_

_“Can’t I?” Andi asks, smiling. “Am I in charge, or not? Do you all work for me, or not? This is my project, and I make the rules. This is top secret, and she has clearly stepped over the line.”_

_“But- Andi, no,” Ashley gasps. “Sarah’s important, she did good work, she-”_

_“Don’t care,” Andi says flatly. “She did the wrong thing.”_

_Sarah’s begging for mercy, and Andi rolls her eyes. “Oh, will you please shut the fuck up?”_

_One of the guards motions toward the duct tape, but Sarah falls silent, and Andi shakes her head._

_“So, what, you’re just going to take her out the back and shoot her?” Lauren asks levelly. "You really think the Board's going to be OK with that? We may answer to you, but you answer to the Board. Don't forget that."_

_“Lauren, when would I ever do anything that unsophisticated? And as for your other point, I_ never _forget who I answer to. Maybe all of you should do the same."_

_Lauren doesn’t respond. Instead, she looks down, avoiding even a single glance at Andi._

_“Olivia,” Andi says amiably. “You’re our liaison with Omega. Tell me the current state of Project Zero.”_

_Olivia looks startled. “Project Zero? It’s on hold, Andi, you know that.”_

_“And why is it on hold?”_

_“The experiments involved would ruin the subjects, just_  ruin _them_. _We pick them specially, we can’t just throw them away.”_

 _Andi smiles. “Well, isn’t it lucky that we now have a subject we_ can _throw away?”_

_The room goes silent as the meaning of what she’s saying dawns on the team, and it’s broken when Sarah starts screaming._

_Andi groans. “Can somebody_  please _shut her up?”_

_The guard gets some more duct tape, and Andi doesn't object._

_“You can’t do this,” Jean whispers, white under his tan._

_“Can’t I?” Andi asks. “On this project, if you fuck up that bad, you_  will _pay the price. I won’t risk_ any _breaches of security. May I remind you all that this fuckup could potentially ruin the project, and any serious clusterfuck might end with all of us_ dead?”

_Nobody responds._

_“Exactly,” Andi says. “Olivia, Jean, Max, Ashley, you’re coming with me. We’re taking Sarah to Omega. The rest of you, back to work, and keep your mouths_ shut _. You knew the penalties when you signed up, you don’t get to cry about it now.”_

_For a second, nobody moves, except for Sarah, who's still screaming, still desperately trying to escape._

_Andi purses her lips. “Why are you all still here?”_

_They leave very quickly._

 

 

It doesn’t seem to take long for the sedatives to wear off. The other man stirs, blinks, and finally mutters a single word: “Bastards.”  
  
“You got that right,” Seth agrees. A second later, he realises what just happened and pauses. “Are you OK?”

“Fine,” his cellmate snaps.  
  
Seth recoils, and falls silent.  
  
Neither man speaks after that, and Seth is on edge. He isn’t sure if the other man dislikes him, or just didn’t want to talk, though he seems to be pretty hostile. Either way, he decides to just stay away from him, inasmuch as that’s actually possible.  
  
He’s got _The Blue World_ , anyway, so it's not like he's bored.

OK, it's not like he's _that_ bored.

 

 

 _Dean sighs and rolls his eyes. Yeah, he really_ fucked that up.

 _He didn’t mean to sound so angry. He’s just pissed off at how fucking_ tired _he feels._

 _In his head, he's got an entire crowd golf clapping at him._ Once again, Dean Ambrose proves to be a total fuckup, _he thinks._ This could have been a beautiful friendship. Or whatever.

_Well, there’s nothing he can do about it now._

_He closes his eyes, and lets sleep drag him into its tight embrace._

 

  
The next time Seth looks over at him, his cellmate’s asleep again.  
  
Narcolepsy? Seth wonders. Exhaustion? Illness? Or- wait, no, that’s it. The blonde lady said something about a countermeasure.  
  
But what did she mean?  
  
Seth puts the book down and lies back on his bed, his hands behind his head, thinking hard.  
  
On the one hand, Seth has no idea of exactly what these people are capable of creating. So it’s perfectly plausible that they’ve made something that can just put this guy to sleep whenever they want.  
  
On the other hand, Seth has no idea what to do. He has no idea why this guy needs a countermeasure, or if he’s in danger just from being in the same room as him.  
  
He wonders why they’d put somebody that dangerous in with him, and then freezes.  
  
Maybe, just maybe, it’s a test of their countermeasure. To see if their maniac can be stopped from killing him.  
  
Wait, no, that doesn’t make sense. They’ve spent time and effort on making Seth into what they want (whatever that is). Why would they throw him away?  
  
Maybe it’s a test of him? To see if whatever they’ve done to him will work in the event that the other guy tries to kill him?  
  
Seth looks down at his hands, and wonders how to activate superpowers you didn’t know you had.  
  
He wiggles his fingers experimentally, and nothing happens.  
  
OK, then.  
  
He tries imagining fire, water, air, lightning flowing out of his hands, and gets no result. He can’t move things with his mind, or hear the other guy’s thoughts. He tries running, but he's not super-fast, and he can't pick up a bed with one hand. Hmmm.  
  
Yeah, this probably isn’t going to work.  
  
Seth stops trying to activate his (possible) superpowers and returns to pondering the countermeasure.  
  
Maybe it’s in the guy’s head, he thinks. Like a box with a dial they can remotely turn up and down, from ‘drowsy’ to ‘comatose’. Or maybe it’s not even in the cell. Maybe they’ve all got, like, microchips or something in their heads, and the countermeasure can target one specific person a time.  
  
Maybe he’s just there as a control subject, to see if their countermeasure can affect just the one person it’s meant to and not everyone.  
  
Hmmm.  
  
Then again, maybe it is in the cell.  
  
Seth purses his lips as he thinks it over.  
  
_Now, if I were a countermeasure, where would I hide?_  
  
The obvious answer, Seth decides, is somewhere where no one can interfere with it. After all, if it got broken or smashed, then hell would (probably) break loose.  
  
On the other hand, it would need to be accessible, in case there was a problem. Or, hell, if the batteries needed replacing.  
  
If it uses batteries, that is.  
  
Hmmm.  
  
Despite the near-impossibility of his task, Seth is actually quite enthusiastic.  
  
Hey, it’s something to _do_ , at least. Not that he isn’t enjoying the books, but reading gets boring when you have no alternative.  
  
Seth gets up, rolls up his metaphorical sleeves, and starts taking the place apart.  
  
  
  
_“What’s going on?”_

_“It’s Tau. I have no idea what he’s doing.”_

_“Ah, shit.”_

_“What?”_

_“That idiot Sarah told him about the countermeasure. Maybe he’s looking for it.”_

_“He’ll never find it.”_

_“Yeah, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s actively_ doing _something about a thing he should never have known about._ _What do we do?”_

 _“Let him look. He won’t find anything. It’s not like there’s anything_ for _him to find.”_

_“Well… all right. I guess. But you get to monitor him."_

 

  
  
About an hour later, Seth has searched the cell as thoroughly as he can, and found… well, nothing that really looks like a countermeasure. 

What he _has_ found, however, is extremely alarming.

Specifically, it’s the number of tiny cameras that are scattered around the cell.  
  
_What, so the ones on the ceiling weren’t enough?_ he thinks to himself.  
  
Worse, there are cameras in the bathroom, carefully positioned out of his reach. He shudders at the thought, and tries to distract himself.  
  
What he didn’t find was anything that looked like a microphone, but maybe the people in charge don’t think that they’ll hear anything. After all, is there really much to hear?  
  
The one place he didn’t search was his cellmate’s bed. He did look under it, but that was all. He wasn’t going to invade the guy’s privacy that much.  
  
Seth flops down on his bed and sighs.  
  
He idly focuses on the ceiling, and his eyes go wide.  
  
Four cameras, one in each corner. Three are the same sleek black model, but one is larger, more like a big grey box.  
  
_The camera_ , Seth thinks. _It’s probably a dummy, it doesn’t work at all. They make it look like an older model, and that way they hide the countermeasure inside and nobody notices. Who looks at the cameras? Nobody looks up._  
  
Experimentally, he stands on his bed and tries to touch the ceiling, but it’s out of his reach.  
  
_Shit, that’s good,_ he thinks admiringly. _It’s fucking perfect._  
  
If it’s what he thinks it is, it’ll probably be too strong to be damaged by people throwing things at it, too. The perfect setup.

So, now he’s found it. What’s he going to do now?  
  
Before Seth can lie back down and start thinking, the lights go out, and an alarm starts blaring.  
  
Startled, he falls off the bed.

  
  
_“Jesus Christ on a bike! What the fuck is going on?”_

 _“We’ve got a breakout! Everyone, get inside immediately! Anyone not inside in ten seconds_ will _be locked out! Guards, code blue! If you have not been assigned to guard a person or room, get out there and contain the subjects! I repeat, we have a code blue! Three red shirts and Subjects Beta and Mu have escaped! Contain them immediately! Do not harm Beta or Mu! I repeat, do_ not _harm Beta or Mu!”_  
  
  
  
Seth lands on the floor hard, and manages to restrain his pained cry as his knee hits the ground painfully.  
  
Quickly, he rolls under the bed and stays still, staring vainly into the darkness, ignoring his throbbing knee.  
  
The lights suddenly go on, but they’re not the usual stark white. Instead, they’re a sickly green, and Seth blinks.  
  
Something’s wrong. Something’s very, very wrong.  
  
The alarm keeps blaring, loud enough to make Seth cover his ears, and next to him, his cellmate stirs and mutters something.  
  
“Shh!” Seth snaps.  
  
“What the fuck?” the other man asks groggily.  
  
Seth grits his teeth, gets up and drags the man out of bed and onto the floor. There’s more than enough room under his bed for them both, and he presses a finger to the other guy’s lips.  
  
“I have no idea what’s going on, but it can’t be good,” he whispers. “So stay still and _keep your mouth shut_. Understand?”  
  
The guy blinks and nods, and Seth turns back toward the door, constantly alert.  
  
It’s a few minutes of nothing before a voice comes over the loudspeakers.  
  
_“Attention, all subjects! A minor emergency has occurred which is being contained as we speak. It is nothing to be concerned about. Remain in your cells and stay calm. Any subject who does not comply with these instructions will be severely penalised. I repeat, stay calm and remain in your cells, the situation is being contained! That is all.”_  
  
“Bullshit,” Seth whispers.  
  
“Like being on fucking _Big Brother,_ ” the other guy mutters, and Seth barks out a laugh before he can stop himself.  
  
When he looks over, the other guy’s smiling, and hesitantly, Seth smiles back.  
  
And so they wait.  
  
  
  
_The doors are made of strong steel, but that’s no match for Subject Mu’s strength. He and Beta have been planning for days, keeping as quiet as they can._

 _There's no perfect time to act, but sooner's better than later. Mu-_ Michael _, he tells himself, his name is_ Michael _, he can't forget it even if that's how he has to think of himself to survive -_  is _going to get home and see his_ _baby boy, and Beta- John, he said- needs to know that his wife's OK, since he went missing and all._

_There's no way in hell that they're just going to sit in this place and rot._

_They never brought the other three guys into it. What good would they be? If they decide to leave as well, they can be distractions, while Mu and Beta escape._

_Mu looks over at Beta, who nods once. Mu walks over to the door and nonchalantly leans on the bars, staring pensively out into the corridor._

_He turns his head, like he heard a noise, and looks back. Beta’s green eyes are cold as ice, and his dark, shaggy hair goes all over the place as he nods twice._

_Mu takes a deep breath, tenses, and takes hold of two of the bars._

_He pulls once, twice, three times, and the bars come free._

_Instantly, an alarm starts blaring, and the lights go out._

_“What the fuck?” one of the other guys gasps._

_Mu and Beta don’t bother to reply. Instead, Mu drops one bar, breaks the other in half and passes one of the halves back to Beta. Carefully feeling their way forward, they manage to get out of the cell and into the corridor._

_The lights go back on, but now they’re an odd shade of green. They can actually see what they’re doing now, at least._

_“Hey, what the fuck?” someone says. Both men turn. One of the other three guys is standing in front of the hole, his face uncertain. “What the hell are you doing?”_

_“Getting out,” Beta says flatly. “Come or stay, we don’t care.”_

_The three men glance at each other for a second, and one of them nods._

_“Fuck it,” the guy says. “I’m not going to die here.”_

_With that settled, the three of them climb out of the cell and start walking._

_To tell the truth, Beta and Mu have no idea how to get out. They’re just hoping that Beta’s agility and Mu’s strength will help them take down anyone who attacks, at least until they can find the exit._

_It's a shit plan, but it's better than nothing._

_At this point, they'd prefer anything than just sitting in limbo until they die._

_A few minutes later, they’ve taken so many random turns that they’d be hopelessly lost even if they had a map. They’re passing yet another blank door when Beta freezes._

_“What? What is it?” one of the other guys asks._

_“Shut up! Listen!” Beta snaps._

_One of them protests, but Beta glares at him and he falls silent._

_Then Mu can hear it: footsteps. Lots of them. And they're close._

_“Guards,” he breathes._

_“Get back,” Beta hisses._

_“What? Man, no! I won’t be caught by those fuckers!” one of the others exclaims, a loudmouthed idiot with no sense._

_Mu closes his eyes against the inevitable and groans._

Bang.  
  
_Mu feels tiny droplets hit him, and he opens his eyes._

 _The corpse slumps to the floor, headless. The walls and floor behind him are spattered with blood and gore, including the people._  
  
_Mu’s hand shakes as he raises it, and he touches his face. His fingers come away stained with blood._  
  
_Nobody moves for a second. Then an eerie voice comes from behind the shooter’s helmet. “Surrender now. You will not be harmed. Put down your weapons and kneel.”_

_Beta and Mu trade glances._

_“Surrender at once, or we will be forced to subdue you.”_

_“Fuck that,” one of the others says. “You just shot him and you expect us to believe that you won’t hurt us? No. Fuck you. I’m not-”_  
  
_Mu cringes as the man’s head explodes._

_Beta’s eyes narrow, and he screams a single word. “Run!”_

_Mu takes off, and Beta grabs the last remaining escaper and twists so they're standing back to back, turning the guy into a human shield._

_In seconds, the man’s body is riddled with bullets, and Beta drops him and leaps away, covering more ground that way than he could by running._

_All hopes of escape are gone. Now, all they can do is flee and hope to evade the guards._

_They take random turn after random turn, but the guards somehow never lose sight of them, and it isn’t long before they’re running down a corridor and hit a dead end._

_“Shit!” Beta exclaims._

_Footsteps sound behind them._

_Mu looks at the cell in front of them. It’s empty, but- wait. Was that movement? Someone’s hiding?_

_“I’ve got an idea,” he says._

  
Waiting is agonising.  
  
The two men remain under the bed, holding still, hoping that whatever the hell is going on will stop soon.  
  
“This is boring,” the other guy mutters. “Can’t we do something else?”  
  
Seth snickers and elbows him. “Shh!”  
  
“I’m just saying,” the guy says. He has a nice voice, Seth thinks. Raspy, but easy on the ears.  
  
“Just stay put,” Seth whispers.  
  
“But _Mooooom_ ,” the guy whines. “I wanna go out and play.”  
  
Seth can’t help it. He’s tense as all hell, but the humour is a welcome relief. He cracks up.  
  
“See? Knew I could make you laugh,” the guy says.  
  
Seth grins at him.  
  
“Sorry about before,” the guy says after a few seconds pass, sounding rueful. “That was just fuckin' bitchy of me.” 

Seth shrugs. “No big deal, man.”  
  
There’s a pause, and the other guy speaks. “I’m Dean. Dean Ambrose."

It fits him perfectly, Seth thinks absently.

Seth almost extends a hand, but decides not to, and he has no idea why. “Seth Rollins.”

 

  
  
Seth Rollins _, Dean thinks._ A beautiful name for a beautiful man.

 _He blinks, and wonders where the fuck that came from. He’s not romantic. Never has been. And he doesn’t think bullshit like that._

_So what-_

_Dean can’t see in the dark. He wishes he could. But his hearing is very,_ very _good._

_“Somebody’s coming,” he whispers._

_Seth sounds alarmed. “What?”_

_The footsteps get louder, much louder, and both men tense up._  
  
_Dean risks leaning out a little, and freezes. Two men are running down the corridor, and they’re both holding… poles? No, wait, they’re bars. From a cell door? Shit._  
  
_“What’s happening?” Seth whispers._

_Dean shushes him._

_One of the guys stops, positions himself like he’s playing baseball, and takes a swing at the bars._  
  
_Dean ducks back under the bed and motions to Seth to stay still.. A second later, there’s a_ crash _, and something heavy lands on the bed, pressing the mattress down onto Seth, who cries out in surprise._

_Next thing Dean knows, Seth's rolling out from under the bed. Idiot._

_Dean almost yells at him to stay put, but his instincts tell him to shut up, so that's what he does. Instead, Dean tries to pull him back, but with the beast asleep, he’s too slow, too tired. One second, Seth’s on his right, between the beds, and then there’s a yelp, and he’s gone._  
  
_Dean isn’t startled now. He’s angry._

_In fact, he's fucking pissed._

_He does his best to convert the anger into movement, and slides left, under his own bed. It's not smooth, but it works._

_Apparently nobody sees, but he hears more footsteps, and then someone shouts._

_Dean risks sticking his head out for a second, and what he sees freezes him to the spot: one of the men is holding Seth like a doll, the steel bar in his grip pressed against Seth’s throat, trapping him,_  suffocating _him_. _The other man holds his bar like a club, looking from his friend to the squad of screws standing near them._

_“Back off,” the first man snarls. “Or I swear to God, I’ll crush his fucking head. I’ll do it.”_

_“He will,” the second man says quietly._

_One of the screws lowers their weapon and takes a step forward. And Christ on a bike, he… she… it… actually_ speaks _._

_“Subject Mu, release Subject Tau,” it says. “Subject Beta, let go of your weapon. Surrender immediately.”_

_Mu laughs, a sharp, humourless laugh. “Hear that, Beta? Subject Tau, huh? Looks like we got ourselves a real bargaining chip here.”_

_Seth struggles and flails, but Mu shakes him roughly, and Seth subsides._

_Beta nods, and turns to the screw. “Here’s what’s going to happen. The three of us are going to walk out of here. You’re going to lead us directly to the exit. If you try to harm us, if you lead us to the wrong place, if you do anything remotely suspicious, Mu will kill Tau. He’s important, you gave him a designation. You don’t want him dead. So do as we say. We’re_ leaving _.”_

_The screw pauses, and then ...sighs. “Your proposal is denied.”_

_The screws behind it fire, and Dean nearly screams at the thought of Seth getting shot, until he sees a bullet hit the wall and bounce. Not ricochet, bounce._

Rubber _, Dean realises._ Or something like it.

_He stays low. Bullets are flying everywhere. One smashes the mirror in the bathroom, another zips over his head. Something small lands on his head and he looks up: four cameras are on the ceiling, and two of them got hit- the one in the bottom left corner, and the one in the bottom right corner, the weird grey one that doesn't match the others._

_When Dean looks back, Mu has dropped Seth, but Seth is lying on the floor, unmoving and limp._

_In the back of his mind, the beast wakes up, and all it knows is fury._  
  
_For an instant, Dean feels the hot, raw rush of adrenaline and rage through his veins, like liquid life. He feels awake, he feels alive, he feels like he is more than he ever was._

_And then he blacks out, and the beast goes to town._

  
  
  
_“Oh my fucking God.”_

_“That… that just about sums it up, yeah.”_

_“I am_ so _glad that I don’t have to sort out the… mess.”_

_“Yeah, Gavin threw up three times.”_

_“Gavin? But… he did all those corpses that Rho impaled and he was fine!”_

_“I know.”_

_“Jesus.”_

_“Exactly.”_

_“Did he manage to sort them out?”_

_“Yeah. I think. They were pretty… um, pulverized. But he figured out which ones were Mu and Beta. The remains were shipped off to Analysis; the guard corpses were examined and then cremated.”_

_“The others are under control?”_

_“Yeah. Xi and Tau are in Medical now. We’re moving them to a new cell, the old one’s a total loss.”_

_“Any idea why Xi didn’t so much as punch Tau?”_

_“Nope. We’re looking into the footage now. And we’re installing microphones to make sure that the breakout doesn’t happen again. Fucking budget cuts.”_

_“And the rest of the subjects stayed put?”_

_“A few tried to riot, but they were put down quickly.”_

_“Oh, good._ _So, uh, now what, Andi?”_

_“We keep Tau and Xi together for a couple of days, so they can recover and we can run more tests on Tau. The countermeasure’s back online, but it did get taken out during the attack.”_

_“Shit!”_

_“It’s fine, Michi, it’s fine.”_

_“OK, OK, I’ll try to calm down.”_

_“You’re hyperventilating-”_

_“I’m fine! I’ll just go get a drink or something.”_

_“Good. Do that.”_  
  
  
  
Seth wakes up feeling like he’s been wrapped in cotton-wool and bashed against a wall a few times. He groans, coughs and forces himself to sit up.  
  
It might be a new cell, or it might not. It looks the same, but completely intact.  
  
Seth looks up and blinks. Instead of one big grey camera and three sleek black ones, there’s four big grey cameras.  
  
More _countermeasures?_ he wonders. _Is that really necessary? Or are three of them there to disguise the real one?_  
  
He looks over, and relief floods through him when he sees Dean peacefully sleeping in the next bed. _Thank God_.  
  
He has no idea what to do now. He’s not hungry, which is good because there’s no food anyway. He wants to wake Dean up, but he doesn’t know if Dean even can wake up right now.  
  
Hmmm. This is problematic.  
  
He goes with the obvious choice: he goes back to sleep.

  
  
When he wakes up, Dean’s gone, and that fucking sucks.  
  
Yeah, they knew each other for like two hours, but he’s the closest Seth’s got to having a friend here. Besides, traumatic situations like hostage crises forge close bonds.  
  
He wonders if he’ll ever see Dean again, and the question makes him feel sad.  
  
His stomach growls, and he sees a couple of trays left on the next bed.

 _Awesome,_ he thinks, reaching for the closest one, happy to distract himself.  
  
Wait.  
  
There are two trays, and they appear to be untouched.  
  
He hopes that it means that Dean's coming back. But there's no definite way to tell. After all, maybe they just pulled him out before he got a chance to eat.

Or maybe Dean just wasn’t hungry.  
  
Whatever. Seth’s going to go for the optimistic option.  
  
Once he’s finished eating, he flops down on his bed. He’s sore, but not tired, and he doesn’t feel like reading, but he doesn’t really have a choice.  
  
So he grabs _Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy_ and tries to distract himself.

 

  
Half an hour later, footsteps knock Seth out of the story, and he looks up: it's the guards, and they've got Dean.

Seth’s first instinct is to grin, but Dean looks like he’s in pain, from the way he’s limping. So instead, he restrains himself and puts the book down.  
  
Once he’s inside, Dean manages to get to his bed, muttering a wide variety of words that all include ‘fuck’. He throws himself down and groans. “Fucking motherfuckers…”

“Um. What happened?” Seth asks tentatively.

“Just a few tests, they said. Shouldn’t fucking take long, they said… next thing I know, I’ve got five fucking needles the size of my fucking finger in my fucking ankle!”  
  
Seth shudders. “Jesus!”

“And the fuckers fucking complained that I was shouting! So, what, I’m not fucking allowed to be in pain, now?” Dean snarls.  
  
“Bastards,” Seth says, wincing.  
  
Dean nods vigorously. “That’s what I said!” He pauses, and continues. “Didn’t think I’d see you again, after last night.”

Seth nods. “Honestly? I didn’t think I’d be seeing you. I don’t even remember what happened- one minute that fucker’s strangling me with the bar, and then I wake up here.”  
  
Dean’s face changes, just a little. He seems… worried? Nervous, even. He coughs, and speaks. “The fucking screws shot the place up. They were only using rubber bullets, so they knocked you out, but they didn’t kill you.”  
  
Seth nods again. “That makes sense. But what happened to those two guys? Mu and Beta?”  
  
Dean tenses, and then exhales. “They tried to fight their way out. The screws got them.”  
  
Seth isn’t sure what to make of that. It’s pretty obvious that Dean’s lying, but why? And what about? And would the fallout be worth calling him on it?  
  
In a second, Seth weighs up the pros and cons. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s been lonely. Really lonely. And hey, if he’s destined to die horribly, he may as well hang on to the only friend he’s got here.

He says nothing.  
  
His lack of reaction makes Dean visibly relax, and he continues. “Anyway. They dragged me out before I even got a chance to wake up. You’d think by now they’d have figured out why I’m so fucking tired all the time…”

“Oh, I know that,” Seth says without thinking.  
  
Dean slowly turns to look at him, and Seth flinches away almost unconsciously. There’s a level, restrained look in Dean’s eyes that makes Seth want to be as far away from him as possible. “What did you just say?”  
  
Seth stumbles over his words as he explains about the blonde woman who talked to him and what she said. Once he’s done, he realises how stupid it sounds, in hindsight. After all, it’s not like there’s any way he can actually prove it happened. And he doesn't want Dean to start thinking that he's some kind of spy.  
  
Dean purses his lips, thinking it over, and then speaks. “This blonde chick. What did she look like?" 

Seth casts his mind back, trying to recall the details. “Uh… maybe thirty or thirty-five, white, long hair, dyed, dark eyes. She was kinda on the plump side, but not really that fat. Medium height, American accent, green shirt, acted like she ruled the world-”  
  
“I remember her,” Dean says distantly. “She was in the arena.”  
  
Seth blinks. “The what?”  
  
Dean snaps back to reality and shakes his head. “Never mind. What else did she say?”  
  
Seth tells him everything he can remember.  
  
Dean tilts his head. “Huh. So I can’t get sick. That’s… good. I guess.”  
  
Seth shrugs. “At least it’s an upside?”

“Better than nothing,” Dean agrees. “And this countermeasure…”

Seth shrugs. “I don’t know. I think… maybe… it might be…”

He leans close and whispers in Dean’s ear. “In the cameras.”

Dean looks confused, so Seth explains.

Once he’s done, both of them look up at the four big grey cameras.

“Shit,” Dean says finally.

“Yeah,” Seth agrees.

“Why the whispering?” Dean asks curiously.

Seth sighs, and does his best to keep his voice down. “There’s cameras all over this cell. Small ones. And probably microphones, too.”

“Ah, fuck,” Dean mutters ruefully.

Seth shrugs.

There’s an awkward silence, and Seth finally breaks it. “So, uh… what do we do now?”

 

  
That first day, they don’t talk a lot. Dean elects to go back to sleep, citing his aching ankle as an excuse, and Seth plays house of cards with some of the smaller, thinner books.  
  
Once he gets bored, he empties the crates and does his best to build fortresses using the crates as foundations, the books as building blocks and the smaller items as turrets and soldiers. Then he does his best to conduct a battle between them, calculating extra powers and weapons for his ‘soldiers’ based on what they’re made of. 

He doesn’t realise that Dean’s awake and watching him until Fortress Neutron launches a shampoo cannon at Fortress Proton, knocking a hole in its wall. Dean applauds, and Seth turns in surprise and nearly blushes.  
  
Dean laughs. “You are _such_ a dork.”  
  
Seth looks away, embarrassed, but when he looks back, Dean’s smile is warm and friendly, no mockery in it at all.

 

  
The second day, Dean gets pulled out by the guards in the morning and is brought back an hour later, unable to feel or move his left hand. Once he’s done cursing everyone who so much as walked through the door of the shithole they’re stuck in, he and Seth compare notes: the people, the layout, everything. Dean gets evasive about certain details, but Seth doesn’t push him.  
  
Once the feeling in Dean’s hand comes back, he joins Seth with the fortresses. Dean’s Fort L7 wages bloody warfare against Seth’s Fort Haste the Day until the battleground is strewn with the dead, corpses lying everywhere and toothpaste all over Seth’s leg.  
  
OK, that was an accident.

Well… not really.

It was Dean’s fault, anyway.  
  
Dean Ambrose is many things, but being a good sport when he’s getting his ass kicked has never been one of them.

Seth makes him clean it up as a penalty, once Fort L7 has been thoroughly destroyed, its soldiers rounded up and executed and its fields sown with salt.

Well, all right, Dean did most of that himself.

Seth makes him pick everything up and put it back in its proper place, and Dean pouts like a rebellious teenager.

It's kinda hot, weirdly enough.

 

  
The third day, Dean sulks like a four-year-old and refuses to talk to Seth until the guards pull him out _again_.  
  
When he gets back, he’s ranting like a maniac, his thigh swathed in bandages, though he eventually calms down.  
  
To distract him, Seth gets him to talk about his old life. They tell each other a lot about their old lives. Not everything, but a lot.

Everyone's got secrets, after all.  
  
Finally, Dean’s up to playing another round, and Seth shows him all the new ‘game pieces’ that mysteriously appeared in a crate. Mostly more of the things they already had, like toothbrushes and so on, but it’s useful.  
  
“You think they think we’re funny?” Dean asks, casting a glance up at the camera.  
  
Seth shrugs. “Guess we’re important enough that they’ll give us shit like this.”  
  
This time, Fort L7 wins, and Dean loves every second of it.

Seth doesn't even get angry. He just smiles and nods.

Because unlike  _some_ people, he can be a good sport.

Whatever. He would have won, if Dean hadn't pulled that totally unfair move at the last minute.

Damn it.

  
  
  
The fourth day, Dean’s gone when Seth wakes up. When he comes back, he’s so out of it that he barely remembers his own name.  
  
Once the drugs wear off, he runs (inasmuch as he can run) to the bathroom, and he throws up for hours. Seth kneels beside him, holding him up as he dry-heaves, and tries to comfort him in between waves of nausea, when Dean’s ranting and screaming about how he’s a fuckup that nobody wants and he should just go slash his wrists already because he’d be putting everyone else out of their misery.

It's nothing that Seth hasn't heard before, sadly.  
  
Once the nausea’s gone, Seth washes Dean’s face, gets him some water and helps him back to bed.

  
  
The fifth day, the guards never come, but Seth and Dean expect them all day, nerves on edge.  
  
At least Dean gets to recover a bit. He and Seth talk about the books they were given, discussing plots and debating the morals of various characters until the lights go off.

At some point, Seth finds that Dean’s now in his bed, and he wonders if it’s at all odd that he really doesn’t mind.

In fact, he kind of likes it.

 

  
The sixth day, Seth wakes up with Dean slumped on top of him, his face buried in Seth’s chest and his arms around Seth.  
  
Seth isn't that surprised to find that he _really_ likes it.

He could definitely get used to it.

Not that he’s actually going to make a move on Dean or anything, because Dean’s sick and besides, they could die at any second-  
  
_So maybe you should_ , a voice in his head urges. _After all, you might never get the chance._  
  
When Dean finally wakes up, he looks pretty shocked at where he ended up, but neither of them says anything about it.

Then again, he doesn’t move away, either.  
  
The guards turn up an hour later, but they bring Dean back shortly afterwards, and Dean’s actually in pretty good shape this time. Apparently, all they wanted was to draw some of his blood, and that was it.  
  
He and Seth end up tucked up in Seth’s bed, talking about movies and TV shows until the lights go out.  
  
The conversation doesn’t end there. They keep talking for a while, neither of them wanting it to end.  
  
At one point, when there's a lull in the conversation, Seth suddenly, abruptly reaches out and kisses Dean.  
  
He has the barest second to think _What the fuck did I just do?_ and _Why the fuck did I do that?_ before Dean kisses him back, desperately, urgently, and somehow the fact that it’s pitch black seems to make it better. He doesn’t have to worry how good or bad he looks or what Dean’s thinking, it’s just him and Dean and nothing else matters.  
  
In the end, it doesn’t go past kissing, but that’s more than enough for Seth. He’s a little overwhelmed once he finally comes up for air, but then again, that might be the oxygen deprivation speaking.  
  
They fall asleep together, wrapped around each other, both happier than they’ve been in a long time.  
  
  
  
_“Oh, aren’t they just adorable?”_

_“Yeah, they- wait. Since when do we have night-vision cameras?”_

_“Since Mu and Beta’s breakout. I managed to get all kinds of things out of the Board once I pointed out how their cutting our budget could have fucked up_ everything _.”_

_“Nicely done, Andi.”_

_“Thank you, Mike.”_

_“So, how are the tests going?”_

_“Pretty good. We just got the results back, and I’ve got some bad news for our little lovebirds.”_

_“Oh? What is it?”_

_“We’ve done just about everything we can here. It’s time to split them up.”_

_“You mean…”_

_“That’s right. Time to get Tau into Plan B.”_

_“Shit. Andi, I don’t_ like _this. It's going to go wrong, we all_  know _that!_ ”

_“Nobody likes it, Mike. What else can we do?”_

_“I…”_

_“Do we_ really _have another option?”_

_“I… guess not. But I’d like it on the record that I do not approve this, nor do I endorse or support it. I'll still do it, but I just want that said.”_

_“All right, Mike. Consider it on the record. Now, unless you have any more objections, go get Olivia and Eric to round up everyone on the Black List. Time for Xi to do a little spring cleaning for us.”_

_“...all right. Roger that.”_  
  
  
  
Dean wakes up feeling better than he has in a very long time.  
  
He’s got Seth in his arms, and though he’s still exhausted as fuck, having Seth so close to him makes up for everything.

He lets himself smile as he thinks that he could stay like this forever.  
  
In the end, he gets fifteen minutes.

 

  
He dozes off after a few minutes of just lying there. One second, he’s wrapped around Seth, and the next, he’s being pulled out of bed.  
  
Confused and only half awake, he can’t quite wrap his mind around what’s happening until he realises that there’s more than one squad of screws in the room. One for him, and one for Seth.  
  
In a second, his blood turns to ice, and he nearly throws up as a horrifying thought hits him: it's possible that they’re both being taken to the arena.  
  
He won’t do it. He won’t hurt Seth. Hell, the beast didn’t lay a hand on Seth either, God knows why. They can shoot him all they want, but he will never, ever hurt Seth.  
  
In some back corner of his mind, Dean knows that it’s a little much over a guy he’s only known for a few days, but fuck that. Right now, Seth is all he has, and Dean will _not_ let him go.  
  
Unfortunately, he never gets the chance to even start holding on, because the squads come to a crossroads and take different directions.  
  
Dean fights like a tiger, and Seth’s struggling against his own captors, Dean swearing and shouting and Seth protesting as they’re pulled apart.  
  
Dean gets one last look at Seth as he’s dragged down the opposite corridor and around a corner, and then he’s gone.

Devastation hits him like a blow to the stomach, and it's like he's choking, drowning, suffocating.

 _Seth's gone,_ he thinks numbly.  _Seth's gone. Seth's gone._

In the back of his head, the beast wakes up, and the same feeling as before shoots through him, the feeling of boundless energy.

More importantly, Dean's emotions wake up.

He's not numb any more. He's  _livid._  
  
_Dean? Dean? What’s going on? Are you all right?_  
  
_Fuck you! Fuck this! Fuck these cunts!_ Dean snarls, doing his best to get free, and failing.

The beast is quiet for a second, as it does whatever it does- goes through his memories? Whatever- and then it speaks up. _Ah. I see. I... I am sorry._

Dean does not want any of this bullshit right now.

The beast switches topics.  _If you wish revenge, I can help you-_

Dean wants it. Oh, God, he wants it. But before he can maim anyone, a door opens and he’s pulled inside.  
  
It’s the arena again, and all the fucking lab coats and douchefuckers on the upper floor back off as soon as they see him.  
  
Fucknuckle backs off more than most, gesturing quickly, like he wants Dean as far away from him as possible.  
  
Dean fixes his eyes on Fucknuckle’s face, and knows in his heart that one day, he’s going to rip his fucking head off.

 _That's a promise,_ he thinks.  _I'm going to fucking kill you._  
  
The screws practically shove him off the ladder, but Dean lands just as easily as before.  
  
The beast tallies the others instantly. There’s… wait. Twenty-three of them. That’s unusual. Normally there’s an even number.  
  
Something’s up. The beast knows it, but Dean doesn't care.  
  
Fucknuckle starts reciting the rules, but Dean doesn’t bother listening. Instead, he focuses on the men surrounding him- young men, old men, tall men, short men. Doesn’t matter. He’s going to rip every single one of these fuckers apart.  
  
_Do you want me to-_

 _NO!_ Dean roars. _I’ll fucking do it!_

_I apologise if I have offended. I believe... I think there is something else we can try. A way for you to use my strength without losing control to me. I am not sure if it will work, but-_

_I don't care! Do it!_

_As you wish._

“Three, two, one. Go.”  
  
Dean’s eyes turn purple.

 

_It's an odd sensation, to say the least. Dean's taken a few drugs before- but never more than a couple of times, fuck you very much- and the feeling reminds him of some meth he did once, back when he was a teenager, and thus a complete fucking moron. He feels like he can do anything, like he's strong enough to move the world._

_It's actually kind of scary. He doesn't like it at all._

_The actual fight isn't as easy as he thought it would be. Dean’s used to brawling, but he’s not so used to fighting when his hands go_ through _his opponents’ bodies._

_At first, the gore horrifies him, but he looks up at the watchers, and his resolve hardens._

_They took Seth away. He might never see him again._

_He wants to die, anything rather than this. But fuck it, this is what he got, so he’ll take as many people with him as he can._

_After the first few, he’s feeling oddly detached, the beast watching and relishing the carnage, but saying nothing. It’s like he’s playing a very realistic video game, hitting button after button and watching enemy after enemy go down as blood spurts and heads break, but it’s not real._

_Nothing’s real except the stabbing pain in his heart._

_He wants Seth. He wants to hear Seth’s voice, feel Seth’s warmth next to him, wake up to Seth snoring like a foghorn._

_Instead, he got_ this.

 _More proof that God- or fate, or whatever the fuck it is- fucking_ hates _him. As if he needed any more proof._

_At least it’s over soon. Dean’s standing alone in the middle of the aftermath, staring around him at the bodies, still feeling the numb detachment. With a sigh, he lets go of the beast’s strength, and his eyes turn back to blue and red-_

-and one of the ‘corpses’ gets up and tackles him so hard that the breath gets knocked out of him. They hit the floor, Dean trying to break free from his taller, heavier opponent, but the fight’s gone out of him.

He doesn’t care. He just doesn’t care anymore.

If this guy kills him, so be it. He doesn’t fucking care.

 _Dean,_ the beast says. _You are-_

Dean ignores it.

He stops moving, slumps against the concrete, and doesn’t resist as his opponent adjusts so he’s kneeling, pinning Dean down, one hand on his chest and the other gripping Dean’s throat.  
  
“Kill me,” Dean croaks.

The other guy freezes. “What?”

“Just fucking kill me,” Dean says. “Get it the fuck over with. I want out.”

 _Dean,_ the beast says, sounding horrified. _Do not-_

 _Shut up_ , Dean snarls.

“Do it!” he snaps. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

“Why?” the other man asks, sounding confused.

“The fuck do you care?” Dean snaps. “Just do it!”

“I won’t do it unless you tell me,” the other guy replies.

Dean closes his eyes, and it takes a while for him to get the words out, his mouth dry as a bone. “They took him away. I’ll probably never see him again. They're gonna fucking kill him."

“Who is he?” the other guy asks curiously.

“He’s… fuck you. I love him, OK? I fucking love him and they fucking took him away from me. Will you just fucking kill me already?”

There’s a pause, and the other guy makes up his mind. “No.”  
  
Dean’s head snaps up, and he stares into brown eyes framed by long black hair. “What? You said-”

“Look at it this way,” the other guy says quietly, leaning forward to whisper it into Dean’s ear. “You stay alive, work with me, and we can take this place apart and get your boy back. Deal?”

 _Yes,_ the beast says. _Take it. We cannot give up so easily, Dean! We must fight this!_

Dean ignores it. He wants to disappear, wants to drown, wants the ground to open up and swallow him-

-but if he takes this man’s offer, then maybe he’ll see Seth again. He feels sick, knowing that Seth might be dead right now, but he knows that the beast is right. He can't give up now. If Seth's still alive, then Dean will find him. And if he's not, Dean will take every single one of these fuckers and send them to Hell.

“Deal,” he says finally.

“Good.”

The other guy gets off him and offers Dean a hand. Dean takes it and gets up.

“Now what?” he mutters.

“We wait.”  

And that's exactly what they do.

After a couple of minutes, Fucknuckle appears at the railing. “The rules are clear, boys. Only one of you makes it out.”  

“No deal,” Dean snarls. “You get us both, you fucking cunt.”

Fucknuckle sighs. “All you had to do was-”

 _MOVE!_  
  
Dean throws himself to the side almost before the beast roars its warning, knocking the other man over as a bullet flies through the space where the other guy’s head would have been. Dean gets to his feet and steps between his new ally and the sniper.  
  
“Try that again and you can say goodbye to your fucking arms and legs, sunshine,” he snarls.

The sniper hesitates, and Fucknuckle pauses and swallows, like he has no idea what to do.

For a second, the moment’s frozen, nobody moving, and then a cell phone rings loudly, startling everyone.

Fucknuckle pulls it out of his pocket, hits a button, starts talking. Everyone waits, watching him, until he hangs up and turns around. “Stand down,” he calls, and turns to Dean and his ally. “You’re damn lucky that we’re letting you get away with this,” he says.

The other guy lazily salutes him, and Dean snarls. “You even think about sniping him when he’s on the ladder, and I’ll kill every single one of you fuckers,” he hisses.

He's going to do it anyway. But he can wait. For now.

Fucknuckle takes a step back, and the beast, sensing weakness, cackles in delight.  
  
“No. Definitely not,” he stammers.  
  
Dean flips him off and starts climbing.  

 

As soon as he reaches the top, he’s got a bunch of guns pointed at him. He rolls his eyes and doesn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at them as his ally climbs the ladder. They’re handcuffed and escorted out, the screws giving them the occasional hard shove as they’re led down more fucking corridors and into a new cell.

Dean stands at the bars, watching as the screws fuck off back to whatever shithole they crawled out of, and then turns around.

His ally stands there. “You OK?” he asks.

Dean gives him an incredulous look _. That is such a stupid fucking question,_ he thinks. Then again, anyone who offers the crazy suicidal murderer who's covered in blood a deal has to be either fucking stupid or just as crazy. “Do I fucking look OK?”

“No, you look like a serial killer,” the guy replies pointedly.

 _It’s a fair point_ , the beast says.

 _Shut up,_ Dean replies, not in the mood for anyone's bullshit.

“If we’re going to be working together, we’d better start with the basics. What’s your name?”

Dean leans back against the bars and closes his eyes. “Dean Ambrose.”

“Roman Reigns,” the other man says quietly. “Good to meet you. We'd better start making plans. We're going to get your man back, and then we're going to get out of here. That's a promise.”

He holds out a hand, and Dean shakes it.


	5. so i know you understand every word i say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans are a wonderful thing, but their biggest flaw lies in all the myriad ways they can and will go wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy fuck, I am so sorry that this chapter took so long to do. If it's any consolation, it's longer than every other chapter by far. Also, Roman Reigns, you are an absolute motherfucker to write. For the record, in this AU, Roman's family is based off the Anoa'i family's kayfabe characters, not reality, so just about all of them excepting the Usos and the Snukas are entirely fictional. Just to be clear. And also, I know that David Bowie's eyes aren't two different colours, but Roman doesn't, just saying. Thanks to ntera, whose comment on chapter 3 helped me with a few of the finer details. :) I really hope you all enjoy this one.

Contrary to everyone else’s opinion, Roman Reigns has never gone looking for trouble. Trouble goes looking for him.  
  
Both sides of his family settled in the same town, and both sides were absolutely huge. Roman alone had four brothers and three sisters, though given that he was the baby of the family, he saw his two eldest brothers and his eldest sister only rarely.  
  
He never lacked for company, though. His cousins were innumerable, and family get-togethers were more chaotic than Macy’s on Black Friday morning, what with the dozens of children, their frazzled parents, and all the distant relatives and friends who joined in.  
  
Roman never liked the get-togethers much. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his family- he loved them all. Mostly.  
  
(Everyone’s got that one cousin or sibling who they’d just really like to shove off a bridge.)  
  
He just never liked the noise, or the chaos. He was a shy child, polite, respectful, and never in the way. He was fine whenever, for instance, he’d go over to Jimmy and Jey’s house after school, or whenever his older cousin Tamina would babysit him. But having everyone in the same place at once… yeah. No.  
  
Of course, there was that other reason. 

 

If there was one word that could adequately sum up Roman Reigns as a child, it would be _scapegoat_.

To be fair, it wasn’t intentional… at first. It wasn’t that his cousins disliked him or excluded him. They were always happy to include him in their games, and mostly treated him well. Unfortunately for Roman, trouble sought him out constantly, and his cousins soon found that he was the ideal scapegoat for whenever something inevitably went wrong: the first few times, he didn’t catch on quickly enough to deny it in a way that actually looked plausible, and by the time he did, he was damned. Branded as the family troublemaker, he was the first to be blamed, and no matter how much he protested, denied it or tried to tell the truth, it never worked.  
  
What really pissed him off was that nobody ever believed him. The adults praised his intelligence, loved that he got such good marks in school, spoke of his great athletic ability, and yet never seemed to realise how much it didn’t add up with the picture of the chronic troublemaker. Even when Roman wasn’t there to be blamed, the adults called any fuck-ups the result of his ‘influence’. At times, his uncles and aunts would even tell his cousins to avoid him or not let him drag them into anything.  
  
It went on for years. He was blamed, scolded and punished for everything his cousins could pin on him, and it festered inside him, anger building up like water behind a dam.

But if nobody believed him, then what could he do?

 

  
If there was one word that could adequately sum up Roman Reigns as a teenager, it would be _resentful_.  
  
By the time he was thirteen, he’d given up on his family. Whenever possible, he stayed in his room: studying, practicing playing his guitar, working out, and brooding.

Mostly brooding.  
  
_Fuck it_ , he thought again and again. _I’ll do better than all of them. I’ll show them. They’ll be sorry._  
  
And show them he did. After years of being told that troublemakers never get anywhere in life, and that if he didn’t shape up and apply himself, he’d be destined for prison, he stunned his family by getting nothing less than straight A’s again and again. He loved seeing the shock on their faces, but at the same time, it pissed him off. Like they didn’t believe that he was capable of such good marks, even when he never got less than an A every time.  
  
_Yeah, that’s right,_ he thought after one such report card arrived. _Fuck all of you and what you think of me. I’m better than you. I’m better than all of you._  
  
He put on a careful façade to hide his anger, did his best to not let it show, but his rage only grew. They still thought of him as a troublemaker, even when his cousins were the ones fucking up without him anywhere nearby to use as their scapegoat. None of them cared enough to find out why he was staying away from them. None of them tried to talk to him, none of them even thought that something was wrong, none of them _cared_.  
  
Instead, they wrote it off as part of being a teenager. _He’s just being a rebel,_ they said. _It’s just a phase. He’ll grow out of it._  
  
_No. Fuck that. I hate you all._  
  
What was worse was that it even crossed over to his school life. He was the only person in his family at his high school, but somehow word got around that he was a troublemaker, a clown, someone you could rely on for a laugh.  
  
Needless to say, he wasn’t. Hell, he’d never even played a practical joke before. Not even on his siblings. Not even on April Fools’ Day.  
  
He hated it. Hated having teachers who’d liked him before starting to look at him warily, like they were expecting him to start fucking up their lessons for shits and giggles. Hated being blamed for any hijinks, though at least his classmates would eventually own up instead of letting him be punished in their stead. Of course, that usually wasn’t out of the kindness of their hearts. Even as a teenager, he had a hell of a scowl, and he was tall enough and brawny enough that most people didn’t want to fuck with him. Even the ones who did usually backed off. He never so much as threw a punch; instead, he’d just glare at them until they caved in.  
  
What he really hated was all the people who tried to get close to him. They liked what they heard, not the obvious reality, so they tried to be his friend. Inevitably, they all fucked off once they realised that they were wrong. But whenever anyone asked about it, they all blamed him. Like he’d spread the rumours for a laugh. Like he wanted the attention, wanted the blame, wanted to be noticed.  
  
He just wanted to be left alone.  
  
  
  
It all finally comes to a head one night just after school’s back. Roman’s in his room, working on his math homework. In the yard, Jimmy, Jey and a bunch of the others are playing basketball as best as they can on grass, but no matter how hard they try, the ball usually ends up in the bushes, over the fence, bouncing off the walls- in short, everywhere but actually going through the hoop.  
  
Roman listens to the sound of the game as he works, scowling. His mother always tells him to go play with his cousins, and he always refuses. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near them.  
  
Half an hour into their game, the ball bounces off Roman’s window. He looks over, startled, and shrugs. An accident. No big deal.  
  
When it happens again a few minutes later, he blinks, writes it off as another accident, and keeps writing.  
  
When it happens a third time, he gets out of his chair, walks over to the window and opens it.  
  
Two floors down, his cousins stand there, looking up at him.  
  
Roman groans, rolls his eyes and calls down to them. _“What?”_  
  
“Come _on_ ,” one of the twins calls. “We haven’t seen you in ages, Ro!  Come play with us! You’re really just gonna stay up there and do your homework?”  
  
Roman resists the urge to call him a moron. “Yes, Jimmy, because unlike you, I actually care about my grades.”  
  
“God, Roman,” Jey says in disgust. “Anyone would think that you don’t _want_ to be part of this family.”  
  
The words hit him like a sledgehammer, echoing through his mind and falling into his soul. Roman’s blood goes cold as they settle there, his eyes widening, and he can't muster a response. Instead, he shuts the window and sits down heavily on his bed, his head falling into his hands.  
  
_Anyone would think that you don’t_ want _to be part of this family. Anyone would think that you don’t_ want _to be part of this family. Anyone would think that you don’t_ want _to be part of this family._  
  
It’s true. But at the same time, it isn’t.  
  
What Roman wants, what he really _wants_ with every part of his heart and soul, is to be part of a family that loves and accepts him. A family that treats him like a person and not someone to blame. A family that hears his side of the story, and doesn’t write him off when he’s trying to do the right thing and tell the truth.  
  
But that’s not his family.

What he _wants_ is for his family to be the family they should be.

But they’re not.

So he doesn’t really have a choice.

Jey’s right. He doesn’t want to be part of his family.  
  
The revelation hits him like a punch to the face, and it’s a while before he can think again. But now that he’s finally realised the truth, he knows one thing for certain: he can’t stay here any more. He can’t live like this any more.  
  
So he doesn’t.

  
  
In the end, he doesn’t take a lot. Clothes, his favourite books, his laptop. Stuff like that. The essentials.   
  
He pulls on his favorite boots, the combat boots with the steel caps. When he wears them, he feels like he can take on anyone and anything, and nothing can even hope to stop him. He picks up his room, takes a final glance around to make sure that there’s nothing he’s forgotten, and leaves.  
  
Of course, it’s not that easy. When could anything be easy for him?  
  
He’s nearly out the door when the twins catch up to him, and he sighs, because of course it’s the twins.  
  
“Ro? Where are you going?” Jimmy asks, and Roman grits his teeth as he turns around.  
  
“Don’t call me that,” he says quietly.  
  
“Come on, Ro, it’s just a nickname-”  
  
“I don’t like nicknames.” His voice is calm, steady, and he is anything but. “If you knew me at all, you’d know that.”  
  
“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” Jey says, and he’s looking a little nervous. “You know that-”  
  
“No, you were right,” Roman says, and a strange peace comes over him as he says it. Now that he’s realised the truth, it’s like he’s managed to let go of a huge weight he never knew he was carrying. “I don’t want to be part of this family any more, so I’m gonna leave. And you two can tell everyone all that it’s your fault. Not mine, _yours_.”

The words make him feel like singing, even as the twins’ faces blanch.  
  
“What? You can’t go!” Jimmy blurts out.  
  
“Why not? You want your scapegoat back?” Roman snarls. “Fuck you both, I’m not your bitch.”  
  
“That was just a joke-”  
  
And it was the worst thing he could have said. “A _joke?_ You think it was a fucking joke?” Roman roars, not even caring about how loud his voice is, or how the whole neighbourhood can probably hear him. “Did you think it was _funny_ when I got grounded for a month because you chickenshits wouldn’t own up and tell your dad that you were the ones broke the window when you were playing basketball? Was it _just a joke_ when I got my guitar taken away because Mike said I was the one who locked the cat in Molly’s room? _Was it fucking funny when-”_  
  
“All right!” Jey says desperately. “All right! It wasn’t a joke! It wasn’t funny! We’re sorry, OK? We’re-”  
  
“ _No you fucking aren’t!”_ Roman shouts. “You were never sorry! You’re only saying it because you don’t like that you’re the ones suffering for it instead of me! Well, fuck you, fuck this fucking family, I’m _leaving_. And I’m not coming back. Congratulations. All of you stupid fucks managed to drive me away. I hope you’re fucking proud of yourselves.”  
  
The twins stare at him, horrified, and Roman’s done with them. He picks up his bags, turns around and leaves, and he doesn’t look back even once.  
  
  
  
  
The jig’s up for the twins. Given how loud the noise was, they can’t pretend that it didn’t happen. They spill the beans at once, and tell the adults what happened.  
  
And finally, they tell the truth.  
  
About how Roman left.  
  
About what he said.  
  
And wriggling, squirming under the eyes of their parents and relatives, they tell them about every time they let Roman be blamed for their crimes.  
  
The response is nothing short of chaos.  
  
At first, it’s denial. Disbelief. Roman’s mother runs upstairs in a frenzy and searches the house five times, over and over again, like he’s hiding in a cupboard, moving around from hiding place to hiding place. They call his phone, send texts: no response. They call every member of their family, everyone who he might have considered to be a friend: no luck.

Finally, they play the blame game.  
  
None of them want to admit it. None of them want to own up to the fact that they vindicated the liars and blamed the one honest person. Instead, everyone’s pointing fingers and screaming at each other until Tamina, of all people, flips her shit.  
  
“Will you all _please shut up?”_ she yells, and everyone’s so surprised that the normally-quiet Tamina is screaming that they all do what she says without thinking.  
  
“You know what?” she asks, and she doesn’t give anyone time to respond. “We all fucked up! All of us! We all blamed him, we all lied, we all did it! But you know what? That doesn’t matter right now! What does matter is finding Roman before he gets hurt or kidnapped or God knows what else! So you can all bitch and fight later, because _there’s more important things to do right now!_ ”  
  
Everyone just stares at her, and she glares at them. “The hell are you looking at?”  
  
They look away hurriedly.  
  
In the end, the family gets together, every last one of them, and they talk. Oh, how they talk. They talk for hours, discussing every point, and finally, they reach a final decision: give it a day. Roman might just be sulking, hiding out in the park. If he’s not back in a day, then they tell the police. In the meantime, everyone searches. They check everywhere they can think of, look for Roman in every place he might go.  
  
Unfortunately for them, Roman was right: they don’t know him.  
  
Because by the time they call the police, he’s two states away, and he isn’t coming back.  
  
Well. Not by his own choice, anyway.  
  
  
  
  
Roman’s always been smart. _Assess and act_ , that’s his motto. So when he decides that he’s leaving home, he knows that time is of the essence.  
  
His first stop is at the nearest ATM: he empties his account, stashes the money in his backpack, and then starts walking.  
  
An hour later, he’s on a bus heading out of the state, and he couldn’t be happier.  
  
  
  
For six weeks, Roman Reigns is officially a missing person, and he loves every minute of it. 

Well, most of it.

OK, some of it.

Two days later, he’s in a city that no one cares about in a state that no one cares about, one more nobody in an ocean of nobodies.  
  
It’s a completely new situation for him, this city he doesn’t know. But he’s not daunted. Instead, he feels like a caged bird set free, finally able to fly.

The first thing he does after he gets off the bus is pick a direction and walk a few streets that way, not caring where he ends up. He sits down on a bench and takes out his phone, considering it carefully.

It’s very basic. He didn’t want something modern, some wonder that can perform thousands of functions, just something capable of sending and receiving calls and texts. 

He hesitates, turns it on, and watches as it informs him that he has approximately infinity plus one missed calls and new messages.

He hasn’t turned it on since he left. He didn’t want to. Now, he idly looks through the messages and the call log, and he listens to a few of the voicemail messages. They’re all the same: one of his relatives saying something along the lines of _Please, Roman, come back, tell us where you are, we love you, we need to know you’re OK._

Too fucking late now. That ship has sailed.

He gets up, walks to the curb and drops the phone down the storm drain.

Then he walks away, and in seconds, he’s lost in the crowd.

 

  
Assess and act, he thinks, assess and act. Don’t rush into anything.  
  
So he doesn’t.  
  
He spends his first week getting his bearings: First, he goes to the library and researches the city. He looks up homeless shelters, places to get cheap food and amenities, and most importantly, the places to avoid.  
  
He’s got no intention of staying homeless for the rest of his life, but he knows he can’t just start a whole new life here. For one, he doesn’t have much money, and he’s not even eighteen yet.  
  
Right now, he just wants a break. He wants to get away from all the bullshit and shed all of his emotional baggage.  
  
So he does.  
  
He gets to know this strange new city like he never knew his hometown. By day, he walks around, making his own mental map, listening to the cars race along the streets, feeling the city’s pulse. By night, he moves cautiously around, taking care to avoid anyone who might notice him.  
  
And he broods, because honestly, there’s not much to do besides thinking.  
  
It’s sometime in the fourth week that he finally gives in. He’s holed up in an abandoned house, and it’s not exactly an ideal shelter: one wall’s collapsed, and half the roof’s come off. His little corner is the driest, warmest bit of the house, and it’s fucking freezing, because it’s raining like hell outside and the rain is like liquid ice.  
  
Since he left, he’s been mugged three times (though they never found his money, he hid it damn well), beaten bloody a couple of times (and he’s still not sure whether his toes actually got broken or not when that asshole stamped on his foot, it sure felt like it), chased by people who probably would have killed him if they’d caught him, and nearly arrested more times than he’d like to admit. He’s gone hungry more often than not in a vain attempt to save money, and he’s beginning to feel like he never should have left.  
  
Freedom of movement is a wonderful thing, but not when all it does is damn you.  
  
He can’t go back, though. He made his decision, and he’ll stick it out to the end. Besides, what is he, some fucking pussy who runs home as soon as things get too hard? No. Not him.  
  
As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, he misses his family. Even though he left because he couldn’t stand being with them any longer, he misses them, wants to be back home and safe again.  
  
But that doesn’t change the fact that they ignored him, blamed him, hurt him, used him, and never cared.  
  
So he hides his face under his worn jacket and curses the rain, and tries to pretend that he doesn’t want to go home.

He gets his wish two weeks later, even though he never even whispered it.  
  
There’s some kind of protest going on, a march through the CBD. He makes sure that he’s nowhere near it when it starts, but otherwise, he doesn’t really care. However, something goes wrong, and the protest turns into a riot. Roman’s not even close, but insanity spreads fast: some run away, and others attack anyone in sight, the chaos spreading over the city until he’s caught up in it. Once it’s all over, the cops run around doing a clean up, arresting anyone who got caught committing a crime, who was obviously involved in the march, or who just looks suspicious.  
  
Once again, trouble goes looking for him: Roman’s swept up in their net, and he ends up in the midst of a lot of annoyed, bored, angry prisoners who make his days in the tank increasingly hard to bear, though it’s nothing he can’t handle. Processing takes forever, and it’s ages before the cops finally get down to him.  
  
When they do, however, he’s not surprised when he turns up in their system as a missing person. Their approach immediately changes from ‘possible criminal’ to ‘most likely a victim’, especially once they establish that he’s a minor who wasn’t even near the riot when it started, and who hasn’t committed any crimes.  
  
Roman doesn’t put up a fight. He’s already resigned to the fact that he’s going home. It’s a long while before everything’s sorted out, but in the end, he’s told that he’s going to be escorted to the airport, put on the next flight back home, and he’ll be met at the airport by his family.  
  
_Great. Just great._  
  
Most of the trip is a blur, and he spends most of the flight staring out the window, wishing that he was anywhere but on the plane. 

 _Que sera sera, I guess._  
  
Finally, the plane lands, and when he steps into the terminal, there’s only one person there that he recognizes, and it’s the last person he expected to see.  
  
Tamina stares at him, her expression disapproving, and Roman sighs. Yeah, he knows he looks bad. His hair’s become oily and unkempt. The bruises from the last beating are still showing, and he lost a lot of weight.  
  
In comparison, she looks just fine. Then again, Tamina always does.  
  
She’s always been his favourite cousin, mainly because while they didn’t see each other a lot, she was always the _other_ one who was quiet and didn’t like huge family gatherings. As reserved and silent as her father was loud and boisterous, Tamina never blamed anything on him, but she never spoke up or defended him, either. Then again, Tamina never spoke up about anything.  
  
They stand there, staring at each other, and she’s the one who finally breaks the silence. “You look like shit.”  
  
He barks out a laugh. “The hell did you expect?”  
  
She shrugs.  
  
“So you’re the only one who came, huh?” Roman asks. “Kinda expected the whole family to be here.”  
  
“They wanted to,” she replies. “I told them to fuck off, they already fucked you up enough.”  
  
Roman frowns. “Yeah, and you did what about that, exactly?”  
  
Tamina actually looks remorseful, and Roman’s startled. His ice-cold cousin never shows emotion, not like this.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she says at last, and he knows it’s true. “You always acted like you didn’t care. If I’d known…”  
  
Roman’s heart hurts. Maybe if she’d known. Maybe if _he’d_ known that she was on his side. Maybe, maybe, maybe.  
  
So many maybes. So many possibilities.  
  
But the present’s all there is.  
  
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says finally. “We all fucked up.”  
  
She nods. “You have no idea how many times they all argued over whose fault it is.”  
  
He laughs again. “Of fucking course.”  
  
There’s an awkward silence, and she looks down. “So, uh… you wanna go now? Get it all over with?”  
  
“No,” he admits. “But we probably should.”  
  
They walk away, but instead of going straight to the parking lot, Tamina stops in the food court.  
  
Roman looks at her. “What?”  
  
“You look hungry,” she says. “It won’t kill everyone to wait half an hour so you can eat something.”  
  
Roman’s stomach growls, and he sighs. “I’m broke-”  
  
“I’ll pay,” she says. “Anything you want.”  
  
He smiles shyly. “How can I say no?”  
  
  
  
  
If there was one word that could sum up Roman Reigns as an adult, it would be _solitary_.  
  
As expected, the fallout after his return was long, drawn out and painful.  
  
Most of his family couldn’t apologise enough, so much so that for Roman, it stopped being sincere and started sounding fake.  
  
Like they thought that if they just apologised enough, it’d make everything better.  
  
Yeah, no.  
  
Once the initial furore died down, things… well. They didn’t go back to normal, as such. It was more like a semblance of normal. The kind of normal you get when there’s a massive elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about, but everyone knows it’s there and occasionally someone’s on the verge of saying something about it, but in the end, they stay quiet.  
  
Roman plays the dutiful son while he waits for everyone to settle the fuck down. His parents are cautious, tentative, reluctant to rebuke him, even though it’s not like he ran away because they were too strict- what kind of bullshit would that be?  
  
The only one of his cousins he talks to regularly, though, is Tamina. Given that he’s Roman and she’s Tamina, they don’t really _talk_ a lot, but they stick together, enjoying each other’s silent company.  
  
Of course, there is that one other thing.  
  
Well, it’s a few other things, really.  
  
The reactions from his family to his running away were pretty mixed, as Tamina tells him- a lot of arguing about who was really at fault. In the end, most of his family accepted that they’d all fucked up, and Roman’s OK with that.  
  
However, certain members of his family decide that it was all his fault- and whether they actually believe it or whether they just refuse to accept that they did anything is something Roman doesn’t know, so they’re the ones he avoids like the plague.  
  
Things go OK from there, though. He graduates high school, goes to college and studies economics. He’s by himself again, but at least this time he’s with people who don’t judge him.

And hey, he’s not getting mugged. That’s always a plus.  
  
So of course, just as his life is really getting back on track, that’s when he’s knocked out and abducted one night on the way back to his dorm.

  
 

If there’s one word that could adequately sum up Roman Reigns as a prisoner, it would be _defiant_.  
  
He comes to slowly, twitching and blinking, but before he can open his eyes, a hand grips his shoulder tightly and a voice hisses urgently. “ _Don’t. Don’t move, don’t open your eyes, don’t sit up.”_  
  
Roman freezes, instantly awake and alert, and he does his best to hold still even as he shivers.  
  
“ _Good. If you move, they’ll realise. Just stay still.”_  
  
“ _Who is they?_ ” he whispers, doing his best to not move his lips.  
  
New sounds hit his ears: people… laughing? Talking?  
  
“ _Those assholes. They like to fuck up the new guys for laughs. But they won’t touch you if they don’t think you’re awake.”_  
  
_“What the fuck is going on?”_ Roman whispers.  
  
“ _No idea, man. This ain’t prison, and it ain’t the cops either. The guards take guys away and throw new guys in, but they don’t talk, and nobody ever comes back. They don’t care what happens in here, as long as nobody dies, so don’t count on them turning up to break it up.”_  
  
Roman’s stomach twists, and in a second, he’s more terrified than he’s ever been in his life.  
  
It’s a legacy from his time on the streets: just about everyone he knew in that time was terrified of getting arrested. Some were already wanted for past crimes; others, like Roman, had fled situations they couldn’t live with and refused to return. And a certain group believed wholeheartedly that if they were arrested, the police would pin any unsolved crime they could on them, and then they would be utterly screwed.  
  
Prison, they’d told Roman, was a place they would never leave once they entered. They’d told him many lurid tales of the kind of things that happened in there, and given that the loudest were usually the ones who were constantly high, drunk or batfuck insane, he hadn’t really paid them much heed.  
  
Now he’s remembering every word they said again, and he’s freaking out like whoa.  
  
That being said, he’s not a scared kid any more. It’s been more than six years. He’s grown, put on muscle, learned some more sophisticated moves than the rough, hard ones he learned on the street.  
  
Anyone who tries to fuck with Roman Reigns is going to get their ass handed to them on a plate.  
  
Apparently these shitheads never got the memo, though, because someone says loudly, “This one’s boring,” and someone else replies “What about the other guy?”  
  
“Which one, the redhead or the fucking pussy with the long hair?”  
  
_The_ fuck _did he just say about my hair?_ Roman thinks.

“Fuck, do I look like I care? Just grab one and wake him up so we can have some fun.”  
  
“ _How many are there?_ ” he whispers quickly.  
  
“ _Four of them, three of us. If you count the guy they’re fucking up._ ”  
  
Four. That’s… could be worse? In theory.  
  
Someone grabs Roman’s shoulders, hauling him up, their fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to hurt.

It only adds anger to his terror. A bad combination. For them.  
  
Whoever’s holding him lets go with one hand and slaps him across the face, hard.  
  
Roman gasps, opens his eyes, pretends to be dazed by the light.  
  
Then he balls his fist and swings it into this motherfucker’s face as hard as he can.

  
Roman Reigns has never been a small guy. Even as a baby, he was big.  
  
He towered over his cousins, and they never wanted to play basketball with him unless he was on their team. (It got old pretty fast.)  
  
When he was on the streets, he made sure to learn whatever he could from anyone who was willing to teach him. Most of what he learned was very illegal and very vicious, naturally, but it was just fine by him.  
  
After he got sent home, he made sure to work out, stay fit, practice what he’d learned. All those tricks wouldn’t be any use if he didn’t stay fit enough to use them, after all.  
  
So when Roman Reigns hits someone, they _stay hit_.

As the motherfucker cries out and falls to the ground, clutching what’s left of his nose, Roman looks around, taking in the other three men and their victim, who’s sprawled on the ground- unconscious, dead or just trying to stay alive, whatever. He’s not important just now.  
  
Four of them. Four assholes to fuck up.  
  
Adrenaline courses through Roman’s veins, and he feels so awake, so alive, like he’s got super speed, his mind working overtime.  
  
_Assess and act. Assess and act._  
  
He takes notes in seconds, the thoughts disjointed.  
  
One guy in front of him. Three in the far left corner, standing over their victim. Whole room’s pretty big, holds seven beds and a couple of crates. He can’t see the guy who spoke to him earlier, meaning he’s probably behind him.  
  
The motherfucker who grabbed him now has a broken nose that’s spurting blood, and he’s holding it with both hands, having fallen to the floor. The other three are looking pretty shocked as they process what happened.  
  
_Fuck you_ , Roman thinks.  
  
Roman hauls the shithead with the broken nose up and punches him again, a hard blow to the stomach that leaves him doubled over in pain once Roman drops him.  
  
Normally, he’s pretty nice. He doesn’t hurt people. But he knows that these fuckers only meant him harm, so he’ll gladly fuck them up.  
  
Hey, he’s been assaulted, abducted, taken to some unknown location and thrown into a cell with a pack of assholes. Right now, Roman needs somebody to fuck up, and these guys are just fine.

  
  
_“Juan!”_

_“Fuck, don’t scare me like that!”_  
  
_“Get over it already-”_  
  
_“If you sneak up on me again and I spill my coffee,_ you’re _paying for a new keyboard, understand?”_

_“Blow me, Juan. Look at this!”_

_“So there’s_ another _fight, what’s the- oh. Oh, shit. Who is this guy?”_

_“He’s new, a fresh catch. Just woke up, actually.”_

_“Well, if he wants to be a belligerent asshole, then he can go play with the big boys.”_

_“Like- oh. Oh, no.”_

_“Phi needs some new friends.”_

_“Phi is a fucking psychopath-”_

_“We’re not here to coddle the red shirts, Bianca.”_

_“But- oh, fucking hell. Fine._ You _can clean up the bodies after Phi’s done.”_

 _“God, fine. What’s your problem, anyway? They’re just red shirts, it’s not like they’re actually_ people _.”_  
  
  
  
There _was_ four. There is two. There could just as easily be none, and soon there will be, if Roman has his way.

Roman Reigns usually has his way.  
  
Roman’s hands are streaked with blood, his hair soaked with sweat. Two of his would-be attackers lie at his feet, groaning, and their ‘friends’ have backed up against the wall, staring at him in paralysed horror.  
  
He chuckles and grins at them. “Not so fun when you’re on the other end, is it, huh?”  
  
They don’t respond, and he rolls his eyes. “That’s what-”  
  
Everyone turns as footsteps sound down the corridor, and Roman tenses up as the guards approach, taking in their appearance.  
  
Yeah, these motherfuckers mean business.  
  
“Oh, _shit,_ ” the guy behind him whispers.  
  
Roman steps back as they slam the door open, and he doesn’t have time to react before they grab him roughly and haul him out.  
  
He can hear the protests of the guy behind him as he’s pulled away, but he only gets one last look back before he’s out of sight and earshot.  
  
He doesn’t bother trying to put up a fight as he’s dragged through the corridors; he can tell it’ll be about as much help as a chocolate teapot. Instead, he stumbles along, trying not to fall over while he takes notes of everything around him.  
  
By the end of the journey, he doesn’t have much to go on.  
  
The room he’s dragged into is surreal. It looks, on first glance, like a skateboarder’s dream, with the huge viewing area around the bowl-shaped concrete area.  
  
On second glance, though, it’s a skateboarder’s worst nightmare: the walls are vertical, not sloping, so anyone who tried to do any tricks would probably end up in hospital in about five minutes.  
  
The guards shove Roman toward the ladder, and he gives them a sharp glare before actually climbing down, not that it actually does him any good.  
  
Once he’s at the bottom, he turns around and blanches.  
  
He knows what this is. It’s a prison yard in a bottle.  
  
He counts quickly: twenty-seven other men are in this… whatever the fuck it is. None of them take much notice of him. Instead, they’re talking, pacing, and a few are sitting down as they wait.  
  
Roman glances around, picks the guy who looks the most approachable and heads toward him.  
  
The guy looks up when Roman approaches, and his expression changes from _dreading the future_ to _trying to decide between fight or flight_.  
  
Roman puts his hands up, the universal symbol for _I have no weapon_ , and keeps his voice low and calm. “Hey, man. You got any idea what the fuck this is?”  
  
The guy glances around nervously, his eyes quickly darting around the room, and Roman realises belatedly that maybe showing his hands when there’s still some blood on them wasn’t the best idea.  
  
“No, I don’t,” the other man says. “But I don’t think any of us are going to make it out of here.”  
  
Roman blinks. “What?”  
  
“The guys in my cell, they told me that nobody who gets taken away ever comes back,” the man says. “You do the math.”  
  
Roman nods, mutters some thanks, and turns away.  
  
Shit.  
  
Whatever the fuck is going on, it can’t be good.  
  
The mood in the pit turns downright ugly as they wait, two more men joining them shortly afterwards. All of them are eyeing each other with hostile looks, and everyone’s getting more and more nervous.

Finally, a voice calls for attention.  
  
Everyone looks up at the viewing deck, where a crowd of both guards and people in casual clothes have gathered to watch. Two people are standing in front of the ladder, evidently the ones in charge.  
  
The first is an older woman with white hair and a black coat, her gaze severe. The second, in contrast, is a douchebag with long, shaggy hair and a swagger that could knock eyes out if he isn’t careful.  
  
The woman nods to the douchebag, who climbs down the ladder. He swaggers forward toward the others, grinning at everyone with the smile of a rake and the eyes of a psychopath, and Roman’s not the only one who backs away uneasily.  
  
It’s the reactions of everyone else that tips Roman off. Suddenly, everything makes sense. He knows exactly what this is.  
  
It’s a rat pit, and this guy is the dog.  
  
_Oh, Jesus._  
  
_Assess and act,_ he thinks, trying to calm himself.  
  
The woman clears her throat, and without waiting, she starts talking. “I won’t waste your time. Simply put, this is a test of your versatility and determination. You are all free to leave… but only once the rest of you are dead.”  
  
A rat pit with a twist, then.  
  
_Assess and act._  
  
The click of a gun sounds through the pit, and everyone turns around, only to see a screw with a gun pointed at the ladder.  
  
“Anyone who tries to get out before the others are dead gets shot,” the woman says bluntly. “On my mark, go. In three… two… one…”  
  
Before Roman has time to do anything, the douchebag with the shaggy hair grabs the closest man. There’s a smell like burning hair, the poor bastard screams in agony, and Roman sees sparks literally flying off the douchebag.  
  
This cannot be happening. This does not happen.  
  
That fucker just shocked a guy to death with his bare hands, and _that can’t happen, that’s not possible-_  
  
_Assess and act!_ a voice in the back of his head screams. _We don’t have time for this shit!_  
  
For a second, the world seems to freeze, and everything becomes perfectly clear.  
  
Superpowers aren’t real, Roman thinks. But this guy obviously can generate electricity without help, so therefore superpowers _are_ real, unless he’s got a taser hidden in his hand or some shit like that.  
  
Besides, Roman’s been abducted, he’s trapped in an unknown location full of enemies, and he’s already had to fuck up two men today.  
  
He doesn’t really have any more room for disbelief right now.  
  
So what the fuck can he do?  
  
Time starts to move again, and the room devolves into chaos: the electric douchebag (and that would be a great name for a band, Roman thinks absently, but there’s no time for that) starts laughing like a maniac; the men closest to the dead guy start to scream, run, hide behind the others; and Roman backs up to the nearest wall and starts thinking.

At least he’s got the time for it, because Electro Guy is having way too much fun shocking people to notice Roman.

 

Three corpses later, Roman’s come up with a few conclusions:  
  
1: This clearly isn’t meant to be a fair fight. Sure, the woman implied that everyone had a chance to survive, but this is a rat pit. The whole point is that in the end, the rats only get out as corpses.  
  
2: None of the others seem to be using their heads.  
  
3: Electro Guy is letting sadism get in the way of pragmatism.

4\. Roman is pretty fucking pissed off.  
  
Based off these conclusions, he thinks he’s got a pretty good chance.

It’s not a good plan, in the end, but it’s better than nothing.

And as horrified as he is at the prospect of what he’s about to do, only one person can get out, and Roman simply can't afford to let anyone else win.

He’s directly opposite Electro Guy, so he steps forward, grabs the nearest person and throws him in Electro Guy’s direction.

Instantly, he darts to the right, wincing as the screams start, ignoring the voice in his head shrieking at him about how he just _fucking murdered a guy_ and how the fuck could he do that, how can he-

No time for that now.  
  
He’s betting that Electro Guy will be too distracted by the prospect of fresh victims to realise that Roman’s moving, and he’s right: Roman moves steadily, constantly pushing new victims at him, and before long, he’s right behind Electro Guy, the latter none the wiser.  
  
As it turns out, Electro Guy isn't just unobservant, he's a total moron, so he doesn’t realise that he's doomed until it’s too late. Roman grabs his head and twists it so hard it almost ends up facing backwards, and then he lets go and watches as the corpse falls to the ground.  
  
One more body.  
  
Silence falls like an axe, and Roman stares down at his hands, blind and deaf to the world.  
  
They’re pretty much clean, now, but they should be blood-red, given how many people he just killed. Sure, Electro Guy was the one who actually killed them, but he was just the weapon. Roman was the one pulling the trigger.

_I’m scum. I’m not even human._

He’s a murderer. Inhuman. Despicable.

How can he ever face the world again? How can he look his parents in the eye? How can-

 _Crack_.

Roman spins, covering his ears in vain against the gunshot as it rings out, echoing through the room.

Four of the remaining ‘rats’ are gathered around the ladder. A fifth lies beneath it, blood spreading over his shirt from the hole in his chest, evidently having just tried to ascend.

As Roman watches, horrified, the gunshots ring out again, and one by one, the four men fall, dead.

Almost dead, as it turns out. One tries to grab the lowest rung, tries to pull himself up, but the gun fires again, and his head-

Oh, _Jesus_.

It’s too much. Roman falls to his knees, barely managing to hold himself up as he vomits, his mind replaying the sight of watching the man’s head explode over and over until he wishes they’d shoot him too, just so it’d stop.

He collapses to the side, his head landing on the cold concrete, and there’s something about it that manages to calm him down. Maybe it’s the soothing cold, or the smooth texture. Or maybe it’s just the fact that it’s got something to focus on other than all the corpses.

Whatever it is, a single thought plants itself in his mind and takes root: he is not going to let these people win.

Whatever they’re trying to do, whatever they’ll do to him in the process, he will not let them win. He will not be another corpse for them to throw out.

He wants to survive. He wants to live. Because right now, all he can think about is all the injustice here: he, like all the other rats, was effectively stolen, taken from his family, his friends, his whole _life_. And maybe they took him from his life, but they will not take his life from him.  
  
When he was homeless, he was there by his own choice. He left of his own volition, he made the decision. But here, the decision was taken from him.  
  
Right here, right now, Roman Reigns makes _his_ decision: he _will_ do whatever it takes to make it out. He _will_ get back to his family.  
  
And nothing can stop him now.  
  
He gets to his feet, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and looks over at the remaining three men with a stare that could melt steel.  
  
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he growls, his fists clenched. “The easy way is you climbing that ladder. The hard way is me getting my hands on you. You get five seconds to decide.”  
  
Two minutes later, Roman climbs the ladder without incident, flips the bird to everyone watching, and lets the guards escort him out without protest.  
  
  
  
_“That was impressive, I must admit.”_

 _“Not often you see a red shirt actually use their brain, yeah.”_  
  
_“Well, Phi’s gone. Can’t say I’m crying, I never liked that crazy fucker.”_

_“Me either, Michi. So what do we do with this guy?”_

_“Uh… shit. I don’t know. Have we got any empty cells?”_

_“Yeah, there’s one in the west block…”_

_“Throw him in there while we think of something?”_

_“Sounds good.”_

  
  
The cell Roman ends up in is mercifully empty, but it’s huge, and the size combined with its emptiness makes him feel even more alone.

He tries to distract himself by searching the room, but he doesn’t really come up with anything interesting, and he’s still brooding. So instead, he takes a long, scalding hot shower, scrubbing himself again and again like he can scrub off everything that’s happened.

It doesn’t work.  
  
Once he’s conceded defeat, he dries off, pulls on some fresh clothes, eats the food they left for him and gets into the closest bed, burying his face in the pillow and trying not to think until he falls asleep.

  
_“Fluke.”_

_“Obviously.”_

_“Phi wasn’t that good, anyway-”_

_“God, you two are such pussies.”_

_“_ Excuse _me?”_

_“You’re excused. Look, this guy beat Phi fair and square. Just admit it.”_

_“I…”_

_“Admit it, you pussy.”_

_“Fine! The guy’s better.”_

_“Now your life will be better. Having admitted this, you have opened yourself to a lifetime of peace and prosperity-”_

_“Oh, will you shut the fuck up?”_

_“Do you even have a point, Jean?”_  
  
_“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Xi’s out of the picture right now, so who’s the next best subject?”_

 _“Rho.”_  
  
_“Are you sure? I mean, Iota’s pretty good-”_  
  
_“Iota’s just a brute. Rho has versatility combined with the unbreakable skin.”_

_“Well…”_

_“Jean? What’s your point?”_

_“Does Rho have a test coming up soon?”_

_“Tomorrow, why?”_

_“Let’s throw our man in with Rho and see what happens. If Rho takes him out, I’ll buy you both a box of chocolate. If our man takes out Rho, you both buy me a box. Deal?"_

_“Jean, you’re a fucking idiot. Rho’s going to wipe the floor with this guy.”_

_“Do we have a deal?”_

_“Fine, whatever.”  
_

_“All right.”_

_“Good.”_

  
Roman doesn’t even get to wake up before the guards pull him out of bed and half-carry, half-drag him back into the rat pit arena. The bastards.  
  
In fact, he only comes to when they drop him unceremoniously, letting him land on the floor, _hard_.  
  
“I said ‘go get him first thing in the morning’,” someone says, his voice amused. “I don’t recall saying ‘go get him first thing in the morning and don’t even give him a chance to wake up’.”  
  
One of the guards replies, and Roman groans, the back of his head aching where it impacted on the floor.  
  
“For the love of Christ, they won’t be any good if you knock them around,” the amused man says. “Give me a second…”  
  
Roman’s slowly waking up when the shock of cold against his face snaps him into consciousness. He flinches, looks around and winces away from the light, his brain catching up.  
  
_Oh shit, not this again._  
  
He lifts a hand to his face, feels cold liquid there, and shudders as he does his best to wipe it off.  
  
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” the amused man says.  
  
Roman manages to get his eyes to focus, and the sight that meets his eyes is not a welcome one.  
  
It’s the arena. Again.  
  
Oh, joy.  
  
Slowly, he manages to raise himself until he’s sitting, and he rubs his eyes, trying to get his brain fully online.  
  
“Good morning,” the amused man says. “How about a little life-or-death action to start your day off?”  
  
Roman’s never been one for mornings, but he manages to muster up some sarcasm anyway. “What, don’t I get breakfast first?”  
  
That actually gets a laugh, surprisingly.  
  
“I’m afraid not,” the amused man says, and he actually manages to sound regretful. “But if you’re still around in an hour, I’ll see if I can get something special.”  
  
That sends a chill up Roman’s spine. He manages to ignore the fact that this bastard is talking about the possibility of him _dying_ like it’s a joke, and instead, he gets up.  
  
Without being asked, he walks over to the ladder and climbs down.  
  
Another huge group of people. He counts, and he’s not surprised when the total comes up as thirty again, including himself.  
  
The mood’s just as tense as last time, but Roman’s not on edge. For one, he’s probably the only person there who actually knows what’s going on, and for two, he knows damn well that freaking out won’t help.

Instead, he leans against the wall, takes deep breaths, stays calm, and waits.  
  
He’s got the mood figured out now. He looks at the other rats, and starts categorising them in his head.  
  
It only takes him a couple of seconds to see the ‘leader’. He’s a loudmouthed asshole who’s talking at the top of his voice, trying to get everyone else to follow his lead.  
  
It’s not going to work.  
  
A couple of other guys are looking around frantically, obviously trying to figure out what’s going on. For a second, Roman wants to put them out of their misery, but he decides that ultimately, there’s no point.  
  
There’s a couple of others who seem to be trying to pump themselves up for whatever they’re imagining is going to happen, and the sight’s just plain depressing, so Roman looks away, back at the ladder.  
  
He knows where he fits in. He’s the smart, battle-scarred rat who lurks at the edge, away from the others, just waiting for the first opportunity to make it out of the pit.  
  
All they need is the dog.  
  
The dog comes in the form of a bulky man with a shaved head. He climbs down the ladder slowly, turns around and smiles like a shark.  
  
Ah, fuck.  
  
Roman tunes out the amused man when he starts talking about the rules. Instead, he gets ready, eyes locked on the newcomer, anticipating his first move.  
  
Said first move turns out to be oh  _what the fuck_.  
  
Wolverine? Fucking _Wolverine?_ Roman can’t decide whether to roll his eyes, sigh or freak out at the fact that this guy’s fingers just turned into fucking claws longer than his forearms.  
  
He settles for rolling his eyes and getting as far away as he can.  
  
_Assess and act_.  
  
He comes up with a plan in a few minutes, but there’s one major flaw: he has no idea if this guy can regenerate or not.  
  
It’s better than nothing, anyway.  
  
The guy lunges, turning as he does, and it’s a surprisingly graceful movement that ends with his finger/claws slicing the closest poor bastard in half.  
  
Shit.  
  
Roman nearly throws up, but his mind overrules his body, refusing to allow him to succumb. Instead, he sighs inwardly, scraps his first plan and elects to go for what worked last time: throwing people.  
  
It works this time, too: Not!Wolverine doesn’t realise what’s happening until Roman’s broken his neck.  
  
He shudders as the corpse falls to the floor, but he can’t walk away just yet. There’s one more thing he has to do.

He leans down, picks up the guy’s wrist, and brings it down hard, cutting the guy’s head off with his own claws.  
  
_Try regenerating from that, you asshole._  
  
He ends up throwing up again, especially after the head rolls away and he gets a good look it, but after that, it’s child’s play, and he’s out of the pit in a few minutes.

  
_“Told you. Now you both owe me-”_

_“Yeah, yeah, we get it.”_

_“Soft centres, please. And not the cheap kind.”_

_“Fine! Whatever."_

_“So what do we do with this asshole?”_

_“I’ll pull him in for testing. He’s supposedly just a red shirt, but I want to see if there’s anything odd about him.”_

_“All right, then.”_

  
  
When Roman gets out of the shower, he finds a tray sitting on his bed.  
  
_Hmmmm_.  
  
It’s not like the food he ate the day before, either. There’s… ice-cream. And raspberries. And some kind of pastry.  
  
The amused man may be an asshole, but hey, at least he came through.  
  
Roman dries off, gets dressed, and nearly devours the whole tray in under a minute, because he’s starving and he didn’t realise it until he saw that tray.  
  
He only realises how stupid that was when the world starts turning grey around the edges, and he barely has time to swallow the last mouthful before he passes out.  
  
Fuckers.

  
  
The next two days have their fair share of pros and cons for Roman: on the negative side, he spends them completely unconscious while the various scientists and doctors try to figure out if there’s anything remotely unusual about him, but on the positive side, he manages to completely miss the clusterfuck that was Mu and Beta’s attempted escape.  
  
Of course, given that he missed the entire thing, that doesn’t really make it better, especially not when he wakes up with his head feeling like a drum on which a psychotic two year old has been pounding on for hours.

  
_“So what’s the result?”_

_“Nothing abnormal about him at all.”_

_“So we just wasted two days on nothing?”_

_“I wouldn’t say that. Now that we know for sure that he’s normal, we can throw him at some of our mauve shirts and see what happens next.”_

_“When?”_

_“Give him time for the anaesthetic to wear off. Maybe… oh, tomorrow?”_

_“Yeah, OK.”_

  
  
The next day, Roman finds himself in the arena with a guy who generates copies of himself. His copies can’t take a hit, fading away in seconds, but even though they can’t fight, they do the job of hiding the actual guy from Roman very well.  
  
Of course, the actual fight doesn’t go for long once Roman realises that the guy’s basically defenceless: yeah, he can make lots of copies, but he can’t seem to multitask very well, so only one attacks him at a time, while the rest just form a ‘living’ wall, blocking the real guy from view.  
  
By the time Roman gets to him, the guy’s so worn out from making so many copies that he can barely stand.  
  
It’s not much of a fight.

  
  
The day after, Roman gets put up against a guy whose hands turn into giant, fanged mouths, like some weird cross between a human and a Mawile _._  
  
He’s pretty freaked out, but he figures out the trick quite quickly: a normal human tends to lose their shit if you hit them in the mouth, and this guy is no different, especially once Roman’s knocked a few fangs out of each hand/mouth.  
  
Once the guy’s recoiling, his mouths bleeding, Roman takes him down.

  
By the time the third match in a row comes around, Roman has realised that he’s basically a one-man Dragon Army.  
  
He can only hope that he can measure up to Ender.  
  
This time, his opponent is a guy who can jump so high he nearly _flies_ out of the pit. It’s surreal, the way he just soars up like a bird, and Roman kind of wants to just watch him jump all day, even though he knows he can’t.  
  
Unfortunately for him, that’s all he can do, and while he manages to evade Roman for a while, all Roman has to do is wait for him to come down, grab his leg and swing him headfirst into the wall.

  
  
The fourth day, Roman finally gets a real challenge: this man has super strength, and Roman’s the one dodging and doing his best to keep away as the other man launches devastating punches at him, punches that shatter the concrete walls and send dust and debris flying.  
  
It takes a while, but Roman wins in the end: he grabs a big piece of concrete that got smashed out of the wall, runs in close when the guy isn’t expecting it and clubs him in the head until the guy’s unconscious.  
  
The rest’s easy.  
  
It shouldn’t be so easy, Roman thinks. It shouldn’t be so easy to kill someone. He shouldn’t be sleeping, he should be haunted by visions of his victims, but he’s not, and it’s just _wrong_.

He loses sleep, fretting over his inability to react like an actual person would, and in the end, he still doesn’t know what to do.

  
  
The fifth day, Roman’s tired as hell, and he’s not up to another fight.  
  
He doesn’t get the option, though, because his opponent this time does illusions, and he’s good at it: Roman’s instantly surrounded by thick, opaque fog, then by a labyrinth of tall walls he can’t get through, then by a ring of fire, and then by a wall of thorny vines.  
  
The fog feels cold and the walls are impenetrable and the fire feels hot, but it’s not long before Roman’s realised the flaw: the illusions only go so far. He can’t smell the fire. The walls feel solid, but the texture doesn’t match what he’s seeing. When he touches a thorn, he feels pain, but there’s no wound, no blood.  
  
Experimentally, he closes his eyes and takes a step forward.  
  
Using sound to navigate is a bitch, but the illusionist doesn’t seem to have any other tricks, so except for one bad moment when Roman opens his eyes in the middle of the thorn illusion, there’s nothing else there to impede him.

He swears he can feel the thorns cutting into him for hours afterwards, though.

 

 _“So what have we learned?”_

_“Anyone fit enough and good enough at fighting can fuck up a mauve shirt if they’re smart enough?”_

_“Jean, shut up. Andi, what do we do with this one?”_

_“There’s no point in keeping him around. We’ve done enough-"_

_"Can't we keep him? Turn him into another subject?"_

_"No. He's smart and rebellious. That's a bad combination. If we keep him around any longer, he may end up making more trouble for us. He’s served us well, but he’s outlived his usefulness. Xi will be cleaning house for us tomorrow. You_ know _what to do.”_

_“Understood.”_

 

  
The sixth day is when everything changes.  
  
Roman knows that something’s up when he’s hauled out of bed and not even given a chance to wake up all the way. All the other matches happened after he was awake and had eaten breakfast.  
  
The bastards.  
  
More alarm bells go off in his head when it turns out that he’s not alone for this match, and when the psycho of the day gets brought in, the alarm bells turn into sirens: this guy’s ranting and raving, screaming epithets, and the guards _push_ him off the ladder, but he doesn’t seem to be hurt at all from the landing.  
  
Roman does a quick count, and the total is not good: twenty-four, including the new psycho, who isn’t even paying attention as the latest douchebag starts reciting the rules.  
  
The other times Roman was in with a group, it was always a nice round figure. So, Roman thinks, either they couldn’t muster a full group of some reason, or…  
  
Wait. No. Because why else would they have put him in with a group when he’s had nearly a week of one-on-one fights?  
  
And somehow, Roman really doubts that this is going to be a fair fight, not when this guy’s pacing and snarling like a rabid dog.  
  
He’s starting to feel uncomfortably like he doesn’t have long to live.  
  
Well, all he can do now is-  
  
“One. _Go._ ”  
  
Roman blinks as the guy’s eyes change from the weird, David Bowie-esque red and blue to purple, and oh, what the fuck-  
  
Oh, _shit_.  
  
Because all Roman can do is stand there, transfixed and horrified, as Cujo launches himself at the closest person and-  
  
Roman tastes bile and nearly throws up as Cujo punches the poor bastard so hard that his fist goes _through_ his body, sending blood and flesh and God knows what else flying everywhere.  
  
Even for a man who’s spent the past week watching people die horribly and killing others, this is just too much.  
  
Roman falls to one knee, unable to take his eyes off the carnage, and he actually does throw up when he inhales the disgusting stench.  
  
He manages to roll away from the mess, only to feel drops of blood land on his face.  
  
He resists the urge to look up, just barely. Instead, he stares straight ahead of him, and sees a rapidly-spreading pool of blood, corpses forming grotesque ‘islands’ in the carmine sea.  
  
For a second, everything seems to freeze, and Roman tenses.  
  
If he doesn’t do _something_ , he’ll just become another island in that sea. He’s spent most of the past six days planning his escape when he wasn’t fighting, and if he just gives up, everything he’s done will be for nothing.  
  
No way. No fucking way.

He is _not_ going to die.  
  
_Assess and act. Assess and attack._  
  
He doesn’t even realise it when the words change. Instead, he repeats it over and over, determined to survive.  
  
Instead, he throws himself to the floor, managing to keep at least some of his face out of the pool of blood, and does his best not to move.  
  
Playing dead, after all, is a skill that’s rather reliant on being able to remain still.  
  
He has to do his best to ignore the hideous _crack_ of skulls and bones breaking and the _squelch_ of blood flying, but all too soon the noise stops.  
  
Roman risks lifting his head just a little, and freezes. Cujo’s just standing there, covered in blood, breathing hard, and then somehow his eyes turn back to blue and red.  
  
_Fuck it_ , Roman thinks. _If there’s any time, it’s now_.  
  
He gets to his feet and throws himself at Cujo, crashing into him like a steam train. The impact knocks the air out of the other man, but as they hit the floor, Roman’s surprised to find that Cujo’s barely putting up a fight.  
  
In the end, Cujo just stops moving, and Roman’s able to pin him down and get his hands around Cujo’s throat with almost no effort.  
  
Something’s wrong.  
  
No way in hell would a guy like this go down this easily.  
  
So what-  
  
“Kill me,” Cujo wheezes, his voice cracked and raspy.  
  
Roman freezes, his eyes wide. _What the fucking fuck._  
  
“What?” he manages intelligently.  
  
“Just fucking kill me. Get it the fuck over with. I want out.”  
  
Roman has no idea how to respond to that.  
  
Cujo’s impatient, though, and soon gets annoyed. “Do it! What the fuck are you waiting for?”  
  
Roman can’t do it.  
  
It’s hilariously ironic, if you like comedy so black it makes tar look like snow. Here he is, having killed God knows how many people over the past week, and now he’s faced with an unresisting person who’s actually begging for death, and he can’t do it.  
  
He just… no. _No._  
  
“Why?” he asks instead, desperately stalling.  
  
From the look in his eyes, that’s the last thing Cujo was expecting, and his response is full of vitriol. “The fuck do you care? Just do it!”  
  
Roman has no idea how to respond, so he goes for the obvious. “I won’t do it unless you tell me.”  
  
Cujo closes his eyes, looking agonised, and Roman somehow manages to feel bad for him, even though he’s just seen this guy rip dozens of people apart. “They took him away. I’ll probably never see him again. They’ll fucking kill him.”  
  
Intrigued, Roman presses onwards. “Who is _he?”_  
  
Cujo’s eyes are burning with hatred, and Roman mentally recoils, but he gets his answer. “He’s… fuck you. I love him, OK? I fucking love him and they fucking took him away from me. Will you just fucking kill me already?”

 _Gotcha_ , Roman thinks.  
  
It’s like he’s just won the lottery.  
  
“No,” he says quietly.  
  
Cujo’s head snaps up, and he looks both shocked and outraged. “What? You said-”  
  
Roman has no idea if there’s any way that the guards or the scientists can hear them, but he won’t risk it. He leans forward and whispers into Cujo’s ear, trying to avoid talking too loudly. “Look at it this way. You stay alive, work with me, and we can take this place apart and get your boy back. Deal?”  
  
There’s a very long pause, but finally Cujo nods. “Deal.”  
  
“Good,” Roman says.  
  
He gets to his feet, helps Cujo up, and the two of them wait.  
  
“Now what?” Cujo asks.  
  
“We wait,” Roman replies.  
  
  
By the time the slimeball appears at the top of the ladder, Roman’s starting to have serious doubts about this plan.  
  
It’s not just that he’s covered in blood and gore and shit and God knows what else. It’s more that Cujo can’t even hold still. Instead, he paces, snarls, twitches like he’s aching to be let off his leash.  
  
He doesn’t doubt that Cujo’s strength will be a major help. What he _is_ doubting is Cujo’s ability to stick to a plan and follow orders.  
  
Still, he’ll give the guy a chance.  
  
The slimeball looks annoyed, and Roman suddenly feels the urge to run, even though there’s nowhere to run _to_.  
  
Something’s wrong.  
  
“The rules are clear, boys,” Slimeball says firmly. “Only one of you makes it out.”  
  
Of course. They’re defying him. Resisting his authority, saying _fuck you_ to the rules.  
  
This can’t end well.  
  
“No deal,” Cujo snarls before Roman has a chance to react. “You get us both, you fucking cunt.”  
  
Roman suppresses the urge to smile at that.  
  
Slimeball gives an exaggerated sigh. “All you had to do was-”  
  
Everything happens so quickly that Roman can barely comprehend it. Cujo crashes into him, and he goes from standing upright to landing on the ground in what seems like half a second.

He barely manages to avoid cracking his head, but at the same time, a gun fires, and the sound is so loud that it sends shock waves of pain through Roman's head, and he gasps and covers his ears, as futile as it is. The bullet smashes into the wall a second later, and Roman realises belatedly that Cujo just saved his life.

He kind of feels like an asshole for doubting him, now.

It’s a little less than a minute before he recovers, having missed the rest of the conversation. By the time he gets up, Cujo’s climbing the ladder, and the sniper’s nowhere in sight.

Fuck it. At least if he’s wrong, it’ll be fast.

Roman climbs.

In the end, nothing happens, but it takes hours for Roman to shake off the feeling that he's got a gun pointed at the back of his head.

 

Neither man resists as they’re taken to their new cell, and as they walk, Roman starts reviewing his ideas. The faster he puts them into action, the better.

Once the guards have left, he tries to break the ice. “You OK?”

Cujo glares. “Do I fucking look OK?”

Roman’s nothing but honest. “No, you look like a serial killer.”

Cujo doesn’t react.

Roman presses onward. “If we’re going to be working together, we’d better start with the basics. What’s your name?” 

“Dean Ambrose,” Cujo- Dean- replies, and he looks despondent as he says it.

“Roman Reigns,” Roman says. “Good to meet you. We'd better start making plans. We're going to get your man back, and then we're going to get out of here. That's a promise.”

He extends a hand, the crucial moment.

Cujo- Dean, Roman reminds himself, his name is Dean- doesn’t hesitate. He shakes it.

All right. Now they can get started.

Actually, as it turns out, they can’t.

What Roman _wants_ to do is take a shower, scrub himself as clean as he can, wait for Dean to get clean and then talk strategy.

Instead, he watches, concerned, as Dean slams his hands against the door, frustrated. The metal actually bends a little, and Roman takes a step back involuntarily.

“Careful,” he says. “They’ll flip their shit if you break the door.”

“Don’t care,” Dean groans. “Fuck ‘em. Fuck all of them.”

Roman completely agrees, but right now that’s not really an option.

“Dean, we need-” he starts.

He doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. Instead, Dean spins, grabs the nearest crate and hurls it into the wall. The impact smashes it into splinters, sending debris flying over the cell, and Roman instantly ducks and covers his head.

Another smash makes him straighten up, and all he can do is get the fuck out of the way as Dean starts laying waste to the entire cell.

For what it’s worth, he doesn’t seem to really have an objective, apart from letting his anger out. Roman stays in the bathroom, does his best to clean himself off at the sink, and waits for the noise to stop.

Once it has, he tentatively emerges.

The cell is a wreck, to say the least. There isn’t a single item that hasn’t been smashed. Hell, Dean even smashed the cameras- three of them, anyway, leaving one sleek black camera out of four intact.

He’s going through the rubble as Roman enters, and he doesn’t even look up.

“Are you done?” Roman asks him bluntly.

Dean shrugs, but he doesn’t turn around.

Roman looks around curiously. “The guards aren’t here yet? Shouldn’t they be here by now?”

Dean shrugs again.

Roman frowns, and then the answer hits him: of course the guards won’t instantly come to break up the fight. This is their punishment for disobeying: Dean gets to stay in a cell without his man and with a pile of debris he can’t do anything with, and Roman gets to stay in the cell with a madman who’s just destroyed everything.

Roman has no doubt they’ll turn up eventually. But right now? Yeah, no.

As volatile as this situation is, it’s also very, very good.

“What are you doing?” Roman asks him.

Dean doesn’t answer. Instead, he throws something to the floor behind him, something small and black and very broken.

Roman picks it up curiously, turns it around in his fingers, and blinks. “This… it’s a microphone?”

“Yeah,” Dean says.

“Shit,” Roman breathes.

“I got them all,” Dean replies. “Didn’t get all the cameras-”

“No, that’s good,” Roman interrupts. “Unless they can read lips, they’re pretty much deaf now. Means we can talk about the important shit.”

“Like what?” Dean asks bluntly.

Roman leans against the door and folds his arms. “Like how we’re going to get out of here, that’s what.”

Dean finally turns around, and Roman’s struck again by how beautiful and odd his eyes are, with their vivid, clashing colours.

It’s almost like _The Matrix._  

“Start talking,” Dean says.

“OK, first, what’s your deal?” Roman asks.

Dean raises his eyebrows and purses his lips. “Oh, my deal? You wanna know what my deal is? Which _one_?”

“I mean, what’s up with your eyes?” Roman clarifies.

“Oh, that,” Dean drawls. “It’s no big deal. They put this thing in my head. Like a demon that loves blood and killing things. I’m a living weapon.”

Roman blinks. “They did _what?_ ”

Dean’s blue eye turns the same shade of red as his other eye, and he goes still, like someone flicked his  _off_ switch.

“Holy fuck,” Roman whispers.

“Holy fuck indeed,” not-Dean says, barely moving, his eyes locked on Roman. It’s Dean’s voice, but now he sounds amused, sarcastic… classy, even. “I must admit, I am glad to meet you. You are the only person who has managed to defeat us.”

Roman pauses. “Who exactly am I talking to?”

“I have no name, nor do I particularly desire to possess one,” not!Deansays. “However, you may refer to me as ‘the beast’. And you are Roman Reigns, I believe.”

“Uh, yeah. That’s right.” 

“So how, exactly, do you plan to escape from this place?” the beast asks.

“I’m not sure yet,” Roman admits. “I’m hoping Dean can fill in some of the details. But this is a good start.”

The beast raises Dean’s eyebrows. “How, exactly, is _this_ -” and it waves a hand to encompass the wreck of the cell- “a good start?”

“There’s no way I can make it out alone,” Roman answers. “Dean can rip people apart, tear the doors down, force a way out if we need to. I can’t.”

The beast nods slowly. “I understand.”

It? He? opens his? its? mouth to speak, but all of a sudden, one eye turns blue, and Roman realises that Dean’s back.

“So what’s the plan, genius?” Dean asks sarcastically, and Roman suppresses a wince. He knows that tone of voice. It’s the one people use when they’re using sarcasm or wit to hide the fact that they’re hurting.

Unfortunately, as much as he’d like to help Dean feel better, this conversation is going to have to hit some sore spots.

Better get started, then.

“We don’t have much time,” Roman replies. “They’ll turn up eventually and fix everything. So presuming they can’t hear what we’re saying-”

“They can’t,” Dean says flatly, and there’s a warning tone in his voice that makes Roman decide not to push the point.

“OK. Let’s talk about the dangerous things, then.”

“Like what?”

“What they don’t want us to know,” Roman says. 

Dean nods slowly. “I get you.”

Roman makes a ‘you first’ gesture, and Dean shrugs.

Then his eyes turn red.

Roman manages not to freak out. Instead, he smiles and tries to sound casual. “Back so soon?”

“Indeed,” the beast replies, and man, it is just _wrong_ to hear it speaking with Dean’s voice like that. “The most urgent matter is this: our captors do not know that I am sentient and aware. They believe me to be something akin to a living battery with no mind. This is an ace up our sleeve, but only if it stays there.”

“Got it,” Roman replies. “Anything else?”

The beast hesitates, and then nods. “Be on alert for any camera that is large and grey. Seth believes them to hold a countermeasure intended to control me.”

“Seth? Oh, wait… is that the guy Dean… likes?” Roman asks carefully.

“The same.”

“What kind of countermeasure?”  
  
“It forces me to sleep,” the beast replies, and now it sounds angry. “Thus depriving Dean of my strength and forcing him into a weakened state.”  
  
“That sounds… impractical,” Roman admits.  
  
“Oh, it is. I will have their heads for this,” the beast says, its voice oozing with satisfaction.  
  
Roman resists the urge to run. Instead, he folds his arms and nods.  
  
The beast opens Dean’s mouth, but instead of speaking, it pauses. “Ah. I believe Dean wishes to speak.”  
  
Before Roman can reply, Dean’s back, and he instantly picks up on Roman’s unease, judging by the way he smiles. “Hope he didn’t scare you too much.”  
  
As much as Roman wants to like Dean, he’s never liked people who try to push him around. And while Dean’s obviously emotionally volatile, that doesn’t mean that Roman’s going to let him be a snarky bitch all the time.  
  
“Pretty sure I scared him,” he replies, carefully not changing his expression.  
  
Dean raises his eyebrows, and there’s this combination of pure smart-assery and disbelief that really gets under Roman’s skin.  
  
He doesn’t know Dean, doesn’t really care what Dean thinks unless it’s relevant to the escape, but somehow Dean manages to look disbelieving in a way that makes Roman start to doubt himself, and it’s annoying as hell.  
  
“Oh, is that so, huh?” he asks, swaggering forward until he’s only a few steps away from Roman.  
  
Roman steps forward until their chests are touching and stares into Dean’s eyes with his best ‘You don’t impress me and I’ve seen worse than you a hundred times’ glare.  
  
“Yeah,” he says softly. “It is.”  
  
Roman knows they’re only having the staring match (God, what are they, twelve?) for a few seconds, but it seems like hours.  
  
Part of it, he’ll admit, is because Dean isn’t bad to look at, and he does have pretty eyes. But there’s something there, some kind of tension that Roman can sense crackling in the air around them, and for a second he has no idea whether Dean’s going to throw a punch or try to kiss him.  
  
In the end, it’s neither. Dean blinks, and Roman exhales, and then the tension’s gone.  
  
It’s not over, they both know that. But now definitely isn’t the time.  
  
“Tell me about Seth,” Roman says, and he’s anticipating trouble.  
  
He’s not disappointed. Dean tenses up, his eyes locked on Roman’s face, and it takes every ounce of self-control Roman has to stay relaxed.  
  
Before Dean can get any more defensive, Roman continues. “The beast said he’s the one who thinks the countermeasure’s in the cameras. Why?”  
  
Dean’s taken off guard, and he answers without any of the usual smart-assery. “He said one of the scientists told him, why?”  
  
Roman blinks. “A scientist told him there’s a countermeasure in the cameras?”  
  
“No, he said she told him by accident, and he figured that the camera was where it is.”  
  
Roman frowns. “You see her around?”  
  
“Saw her once,” Dean says absently. “Haven’t seen her since.”  
  
Roman winces. “OK. She tell him anything else?”  
  
“She said I can’t get sick,” Dean replies. “Like I’m just immune to all sickness.”  
  
“Lucky,” Roman mutters. “So-”  
  
Dean’s head turns toward the door so fast Roman nearly gets whiplash from watching.  
  
It’s a squad of guards.  
  
A very big squad of guards, come to think of it.  
  
Ah, shit.  
  
Before Roman can do anything, Dean throws himself at the cell door, hammering at the bars and screaming incoherently at the guards as they approach.  
  
If it were anyone else doing it, all they’d achieve would be bruised hands and a sore throat.  
  
Unfortunately, it’s Dean motherfucking Ambrose, Roman thinks.  
  
The door doesn’t hold up against Dean’s strength for long.  
  
“Dean, don’t!” is all that Roman manages to get out before Dean bashes the door down and charges into the mass of guards.  
  
In seconds, there are bodies flying everywhere. Roman gets out of the way and watches, aghast, as Dean screams and thrashes, seemingly blind to the world around him, until one of the guards does something and he goes limp, hanging in their grip like a doll.  
  
Great. Just great.  
  
One of the guards looks at another and gestures, and without speaking, the remaining guards divide into four groups: one starts laying out the corpses in a more orderly manner; one starts carrying the few wounded away, one carries Dean off, and the last…  
  
Shit. They’re heading toward Roman.  
  
He has no idea what to do. An apology probably won’t cut it. There’s no way he’s going to try fighting them. So instead, he sighs and submits, holding his hands up in plain view.  
  
“I’m not resisting,” he says.  
  
He’s expecting them to grab him, maybe cuff him. Instead, there’s a glint of metal, then a sharp sting in the side of his neck, and the world goes black.  
  
  
  
_“Well, that was a right clusterfuck.”_  
  
_“You can say that again.”_

_“Well, that was a right clusterfuck.”_

_“Ha. Ha. Ha.”_

_“Any idea what they were talking about?”_

_“Nope. Xi crushed all our mikes, and the one camera left couldn’t really give us a good angle.”_

_“All right. So what do we do with them?”_

_“Are we keeping the red shirt around or not?”_

_“We’re keeping him. If he’s got some kind of leash on Xi, then we’ll need him.”_

_“All right. Clean the cell up and give this guy a designation, then. What have we got vacant?”_

_“Right now? Mu, Chi, and Zeta.”_

_“This guy… hmmm. I think he looks like a Zeta.”_

_“Yeah, whatever. I’ll make it official, give me a sec… there. Done.”_

_“So what do we do with Zeta?”_

_“We’re taking him for check-ups. You’ve seen the footage, right? He landed in the middle of that… mess. If we’re keeping him around, we need to make sure that he hasn’t picked up anything. No point in letting him live if he’ll just get sick and die a week later.”_

_“OK, so what do we do with Xi?”_

_“Oh, I know_ exactly _what we’re doing with Xi.”_  
  
  
  
Roman spends the next three days unconscious in a bed in the infirmary, being tested for just about every disease known to man and being pumped full of various unknown chemicals that make his body spasm, seize, throw up on himself and at one point, go into a very high fever that nearly reaches lethal territory.  
  
Dean, on the other hand, spends the next three days alone and sedated in a cell, too weak and drowsy to do anything, but just a little too awake to sleep, most of the time, so all he can do is rage: rage at how easily they’ve disabled him, rage at how Seth could be dead for all he knows, rage at how Roman’s gone and it’s Dean’s own fault, rage at the fact that once again, Dean Ambrose has gone and managed to fuck everything up _again_.  
  
It’s rather hard to tell who has it worse.  
  
Not that either of them could or would compare their situations.  
  
  
  
_“So how is our new Zeta?”_

_“He’s clear. He’s going to be weak for a while, so I say we stick him back in the cell with Xi for a while.”_

_“And then what?”_

_“I’ve got a plan.”_

_“Oh, here we go…”_

  
  
Roman’s dreams are filled with fire and pain and darkness and flashing light, and so he has no idea when he wakes up, because his eyelids feel like they’ve been glued shut.  
  
He tries to move his hand, but fire explodes along his arm, searing his skin off and sending lightning through the exposed blood vessels, so he slumps back on the bed and prays that the fire will go out soon.  
  
Instead, the darkness swallows him whole, and he drifts in its depths, his muscles aching from not moving for so long until a voice knocks him back into something resembling reality.  
  
“-hear me?” he hears distantly, like it’s being shouted at him from across a football field. He tries to reply, but his mouth feels like it’s made of lead.  
  
“Roman?”  
  
He manages a strangled groan, but that’s about it.  
  
The voice says something, but Roman can’t understand it. For a second, he thinks the darkness has taken him again, and then there’s a sharp sting over his eyes.  
  
The voice says something in a panicked tone, and that only makes Roman feel worse. His ears have stopped working, so all he has to go off is the tone, not the words, and the frenzied babble isn’t helping.  
  
Slowly, he manages to force his eyes to open, but the light hits him like a hammer and he snaps them shut again.  
  
The voice is silent, and over the next couple of minutes, Roman tries again and again to open his eyes, only achieving it after they’ve slowly adjusted.  
  
Even then, he has to struggle to get them to focus, and it takes a few seconds for his mind to recognise what he’s seeing: Dean’s face.  
  
“Can you hear me?” Dean asks very slowly, and Roman manages a nod.

“Fuck, thank God, I don’t know _what_ they shot you up with- they left your fucking eyes taped shut, who _does_ that? And seriously-”

Roman falls asleep before Dean can finish the sentence.

  
For the next two days, the only thing Roman can do by himself is sleep. He wakes up randomly, and most of the time, his only ‘entertainment’ is watching Dean pace the room, hit the walls and scream, but at least Dean’s ready and willing to help out when Roman needs to eat or get to the bathroom, since he can’t walk without help.  
  
In between, he revises what he knows, goes over his myriad plans and works on the minor points until he’s bored senseless.  
  
He does his best to avoid thinking about his family, though. He can’t afford that kind of emotional turmoil, even though the fact that he can’t afford it just makes him angrier.  
  
(There’s one point, late at night, when he gives in and ends up crying, sobbing into the darkness until it swallows him again, probably sick of listening to him.)

(He thinks he might have woken Dean up as well, but he doesn’t know for certain. Dean never says anything about it, anyway.)

  
  
The third day, he’s recovered enough that he can actually get out of bed and walk around by himself, so he devotes the day to exercise: loosening his tight muscles, walking unaided, and he even manages to do a few push-ups and sit-ups, the basic stuff.  
  
Dean alternates between pacing and sarcastically commenting on Roman’s exercise until Roman wants to tape his mouth shut. Instead, they have a merry insult-flinging contest that culminates in Dean managing to imply in one sentence that Roman gets off on whipping dead mutated chimpanzees.  
  
Dean Ambrose is, and has always been, a cunning linguist.

  
  
The fourth day, Roman alternates between exercising and talking (very vague) strategy and details with Dean, who’s still pacing. He can feel his old vigour coming back, and by the end of the day, he’s feeling a hell of a lot like his old self.  
  
He also has to suffer through Dean deciding to sit on his back without asking first as Roman does push-ups, making jokes all the while about how good it feels when Roman’s going up and down.  
  
Roman says nothing, and silently thinks of ways to shut Dean the fuck up.

  
  
The fifth day, Roman finally realises what an idiot he’s been: Dean wasn’t trying to piss him off, he was trying to get rid of his own frustrations.  
  
And as it turns out, it didn’t work, because Roman wakes up to find that Dean’s flipping his shit again, throwing everything he can get his hands on at the walls, the doors, the ceiling.  
  
Roman reacts on instinct, grabbing Dean and holding him tightly in a bear hug until he finally calms down.  
  
He can tell that Dean doesn’t feel like talking, so he doesn’t try. Instead, he lets him go after a few minutes and lies down on his bed, gives Dean some space.  
  
He’s not surprised when Dean nearly breaks the door down from punching it in frustration, though he doesn’t actually do it.  
  
He _is_ surprised, however, when Dean flops down on Roman’s bed and curls up next to him, like a cat with no sense of boundaries or when its human doesn’t feel like company.  
  
On reflection, though, he doesn’t really mind.  
  
Of course, that’s the problem, in the end. Because Roman’s starting to wonder if this isn’t a major issue in the making.  
  
Dean turns over and snuggles into Roman’s side, and Roman sighs.  
  
Yeah, he likes Dean. A lot. More than he did at first, that’s for sure. And yeah, _maybe_ there’s something there. Maybe.  
  
But there are three very pressing questions: one, would it be a good idea if he got involved with Dean, given the circumstances?  
  
Two, what about Seth? There’s no way to tell if he’s even alive, but what if they do see him again?  
  
That, Roman thinks, would be awkward as all hell.  
  
And thus, question three: what if Dean only likes him because Seth’s not there?

Roman winces, and tries not to think about that option.  
  
Next to him, Dean starts snoring, and Roman privately decides that if Dean starts purring, he’ll be sleeping on the floor. Or back in his own bed, where he should be.  
  
Roman tries to shift away a little, but Dean mumbles in protest and clings onto him, and Roman finds that he has been pressed into service as a pillow.  
  
“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters under his breath.  
  
He’s not going to do anything about it, though, because he looks over at Dean and sees that he’s smiling, the first real smile he’s seen on Dean’s face since they met. 

It’s so depressing that Roman doesn’t have the heart to do anything.  
  
At least Dean clinging to him doesn’t make it harder to fall asleep.

 

_“Well?”_

_“Well, what?”_

_“How’s the plan going?”_

_“Fucking awesome, mate.”_

_“So Tau…”_

_“Mate, he’s going fuckin’ ace. How’s Zeta and Xi?”_

_“Uh… well. There’s good news and bad news.”_

_“Spill.”_

_“The good news is that they seem to be getting along. The bad news is that they’re getting bored. They need something new.”_

_“Oh really? Isn’t that lucky for both of us! You see, I just happen to have this_ amazing _solution to your problem…”_

_“Tau?”_

_“Tau. Call Andi, I’ll give you a squiz at what I’ve got set up.”_

_“I have no idea what you just said, but all right.”_

_“Dickhead.”_

_“I heard that.”_

 

  
On the sixth day, Roman is awakened very rudely by some bastard who throws cold water in his face.  
  
He gasps, shocked into wakefulness, and looks around.  
  
A most unwelcome sight meets his eyes.  
  
It’s the arena. Again.  
  
His first reaction is to groan. His second reaction is to wonder what the hell took them so long.  
  
Sure, it was nice spending time on something other than killing people, but he has to wonder _why_ : It didn’t take either him or Dean that long to recover. Roman really doubts that the scientists have got much planned for him, but Dean… yeah.  
  
Something’s up.  
  
He looks around, through the ring of guards surrounding him, and he manages to catch a glimpse of Dean, being held by two guards as he struggles against their grip.  
  
So, business as usual, then.  
  
“Knock it off,” he calls quietly, and call the press, Dean actually obeys him.  
  
A shadow falls over him, and Roman looks up into the eyes of the amused man.  
  
“No breakfast again,” he notes dryly. “This is starting to become a bad habit, you do realise that, right?”  
  
“I do apologise,” the amused man replies. “I’m afraid that my superiors ordered this procedure to be somewhat rushed.”  
  
He looks away, says something Roman can’t catch, and then walks away, leaving Roman very uneasy.  
  
Because unlike last time, there were no jokes about ‘if you’re still around in an hour’, and if that means what Roman thinks it does…  
  
_No point in freaking out_ , he tells himself.  
  
The guards haul Roman to his feet and shove him in the direction of the ladder. He nearly collides with Dean, but Dean ducks out of the way and cuts in front of Roman, nearly falling off the edge in his haste.  
  
Roman waits a few seconds for Dean to get down first, taking the opportunity to look into the arena proper. What he sees makes him feel a hell of a lot better: there are more people in there.  
  
For a while, he’d thought that they’d make him fight Dean again, and that’s one fight he knows he won’t win. The first time was just luck.  
  
At least he's safe from Dean for now. Dean won't hurt him.

He climbs down the ladder and takes his place beside Dean, who’s fidgeting and jittering like a three year old who’s eaten half a ton of sherbet.  
  
This new crowd is a mixed bag: some are noticeably older, others are obviously injured, and a few look really out of it.  
  
The amused man appears at the top of the ladder, starts to talk, and everyone turns to look at him.  
  
Everyone, that is, except three people.  
  
Roman’s staring at Dean, who’s looking across at one of the other guys with a gaze so intense he’s surprised that the other man hasn’t caught fire.  
  
The other man’s staring back, visibly stunned and Roman considers him.  
  
He’s a tall guy, slender, and he looks like he’s in a lot of pain: his face is badly bruised, and his hair looks like it’s caked with blood.  
  
For a second, Roman wonders what the hell’s going on, and then it hits him: This must be Seth. He fits the description Dean gave him once- it’s hard to see, but Roman thinks he sees some blond hair under the blood.  
  
He’s not sure what to make of this.

_Assess and attack._

“Dean,” Roman says quietly. “That’s Seth, isn’t it?”

Dean nods once, not looking away for a second.

“What do we do?” Roman asks.

“I’ll take all the others out,” Dean says, his voice low and intent. “Get him out of the way, _fast_. Tell him Dean says to stay down.”

Roman nods, and directs his attention to the amused man.

“…will get you shot. Got it? Good. When I say _go_ , commence. In three…”

Roman takes a step back.

“Two…”

Across the arena, Seth mouths something to Dean, who nods.  
  
“One…”  
  
Roman looks at Dean, and nearly jumps, stunned, when Dean’s eyes turn _purple._  
  
“ _Go.”_  
  
No time for that. Roman takes a deep breath and starts running as fast as he can.  
  
None of them can catch him; none of their attempts even come close. Instead, Roman crosses the floor in five seconds and throws himself into Seth, knocking them both to the ground, their momentum sending them rolling until they hit the far wall.  
  
Roman rises to a crouch, puts a hand on Seth’s shoulder and says clearly, “Dean says stay down.”  
  
Seth seems startled, but he obeys, and all they can do now is watch the carnage unfolding in front of them as Dean systematically destroys everything around him, sending blood and worse flying.  
  
At least it doesn’t take long, but that’s no consolation. Roman closes his eyes, but the screams just make it worse, and he has to open them again just so he isn’t left wondering.  
  
Next to him, Seth looks green, and at one point he actually does throw up.  
  
Roman can’t really blame him.  
  
Finally, there’s one last agonised scream that's abruptly cut off, and then nothing but silence.  
  
Roman gets to his feet slowly, taking care to not make any sudden movements. Beside him, Seth follows suit, one hand over his mouth.

Dean’s standing alone, facing away from them, covered in blood and gore, and he turns around, his eyes still purple.  
  
“Oh my God,” Seth whispers. “Oh my God, oh my God…”  
  
“You already said that,” Roman mutters, instantly regretting it. It’s not Seth’s fault.  
  
Seth presses himself back against the wall, and then _something_ happens. It’s like a weird buzz that reverberates through Roman’s body, making his bones ache just for a second.  
  
Dean’s eyes go from purple to blue in under a second, and he falls to his knees, looking both stunned and horrified.  
  
“Dean?” Seth asks, horrified. “Is… is that you?”  
  
“Seth,” Dean breathes. “You’re the countermeasure. It was always you.”  
  
Seth nods, his movements stiff and mechanical. “I… yes. I’m sorry.”  
  
Dean closes his eyes, breathing hard, and then looks up at Seth again. “I love you,” he says, sounding utterly exhausted. “I will never hurt you. Ever.”  
  
And with that, he crumples, hitting the floor with a sick  _thud._  
  
If there was one sentence that could adequately describe Roman Reigns right now, it would be _confused as all hell._


	6. so i know you're with me all the way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes become masters of the noble art of making shit up as you go along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fanfic, guys. This fucking fanfic. This is the longest thing I have ever written, no lie. I'm honestly stunned that I managed to not only come up with this, but actually get it finished, it's a freaking miracle. I have no idea what I'm gonna work on next (probably assignments, sadly) but I've got a hell of a lot of things to write, and it's going to be awesome. Thank you all so much for reading, and thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos- you guys keep me going. Hope you enjoy the last chapter.
> 
> Also: I recently started a tumblr: http://indra-cal.tumblr.com, so if you have any questions or comments about the fics, throw them to me and I'll do my best to answer.

_“Well, that cat’s out of the bag now.”_

_“What do we do?”_

_“Logically, the best answer would be to snipe the three of them and start afresh.”_

_“But?”_

_“But, we can’t scrap Xi or Tau yet. Zeta’s disposable, nobody cares about him. That being said, if we axe Zeta, or even hold him separately, Xi may begin refusing to co-operate at all- even with Tau there. No, right now our only option is to put the three of them together and monitor them_ very _closely.”_

_“I don’t like this.”_

_“Neither do I, but right now our hands are tied.”_

 

  
  
Roman really hates it when simple statements turn out to be considerably more complicated than they should be.  
  
For instance, while one could sum up what ensued next as ‘Roman and Seth managed to get Dean up the ladder, and then they carried him back to their cell’, the truth is that it was in no way that easy.  
  
It never fucking is.  
  
On the one hand, getting an unconscious man up a very, very tall ladder with no assistance is a monumental pain in the ass. Add on the fact that Dean’s covered in fuck knows what and neither Roman or Seth wants it on them, and everything becomes a lot more complicated.  
  
On the other hand, Roman doesn’t trust Seth in the slightest, and from what he can tell, Seth doesn’t trust him either, so the chance of having a non-hostile conversation is very low.  
  
It doesn’t help that Dean is over six feet tall and all muscle. In other words, he’s _heavy_ , and it’s not like Roman and Seth are lightweights, but Seth’s injured. Half of his face is just a massive bruise, and he clutches his ribs when he walks.  
  
So when confronted with the problem, neither man actually moves to try solving it. Instead, Roman and Seth stare at each other, both sizing the other up.  
  
There’s a distinct aura of menace, and Roman almost relaxes, because he _knows_ what this is now. It’s a dick-measuring contest. If this were some seedy bar in college, he’d expect someone to start flexing their muscles and brag about everything from what car they drive to how much sex they get.  
  
But it’s just the two of them, so they restrict it to a staring contest. Roman’s a bit taller than Seth, but even injured, Seth refuses to be daunted, staring back into Roman’s eyes with an intense glare.  
  
Roman grudgingly concedes that the guy has some balls.  
  
They’re standing so close their chests are touching, just staring, just breathing, until one of the scientists coughs loudly.  
  
“Boys, you have three options,” she says. “You can kiss, lay ‘em out and measure, or you can take your friend and get up that ladder. And right now, only one of those options will be accepted. You get five seconds to choose. Five…”  
  
Roman stares into Seth’s eyes for a moment longer, and then he leans down and hauls Dean up.  
  
He can’t explain why he doesn’t like Seth so much. Maybe it’s because of what Dean said about Seth being the countermeasure- does that mean Seth was lying? Was he planted amongst the subjects to get Dean on his side? Even if he wasn’t, Dean and Seth were separated for a week- did the scientists get Seth to turn on Dean?  
  
Then of course there’s the other factor: yeah, OK, Roman’s just a bit jealous. Just a little.  
  
All right, maybe more than a little.  
  
But there’s no time for that shit now. And since Seth obviously can’t get Dean up the ladder, Roman’s just going to have to do it himself and be the one who actually gets things done. As always.  
  
In the end, he grabs Dean’s arm with his right hand and climbs the ladder with his left, hauling Dean up the rungs behind him in a way that’s pretty bad, yeah, but it’s the best he can manage.

(OK, the fact that Dean’s coated in blood and gore may or may not have something to do with it as well. But that’s beside the point.)  
  
It takes him a while to get up the ladder, and once he has, he manages to resist the urge to drop Dean’s blood-covered ass in a heap, because seriously, all the gore is just _wrong_. Instead, he sets him down gently, glares at everyone around him and waits for Seth to get there.  
  
Seth either deliberately takes his time, or has trouble climbing in pain with only one working hand. Roman wants to assume it’s the former, even though he knows it’s petty and he has to tell himself to knock it off.  
  
Thing is, there’s really no time for that now. Roman’s still planning his escape, and the most important matter is finding out whether Seth’s a friend or an enemy, because he’s starting to have the very bad feeling that they’re running out of time.  
  
Once Seth gets to the top, the scientist gives Roman an annoyed ‘get on with it’ look, and he hauls Dean up again and gets one arm around him, slinging Dean’s right arm over Roman’s shoulders. It’s a carry that requires two people, and Seth glares at Roman, but he gets his right arm- the uninjured one, Roman’s not that petty- around Dean, and they set off.

 

 

 _“Ash? Your thoughts?”_

_“They don’t like each other. That’s good. Can’t have them getting too cosy. Keep them on edge, and keep a very close eye on them.”_

_“You don’t think they’ll fight?”_

_“Not sure. That’s why we need to keep a close watch. You can never tell, not with these alpha male types.”_

_“I hear you.”_

 

  
  
It takes them a while to get to their new cell. None of the guards try to help at all, and given Seth’s injury and how unresponsive Dean is, they have to stop a few times to readjust their grip so Dean doesn’t end up falling on his face. 

Well, OK, it’s not like it’d actually matter, since Dean regenerates and all, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Roman’s arm is sore as fuck by the time they reach their ‘new’ cell- which looks identical to every other cell, naturally- but he doesn’t complain. No point. Instead, once the door’s slammed behind them, he jerks his head in the direction of the bathroom, and they carry Dean that way.  
  
Dean looks like they pulled him out of a horror movie. His hair is matted with blood, his clothes caked with filth, and the stench is appalling, bad enough that Seth looks like he might throw up. Roman’s stomach twists at the thought of what he knows he has to do, but he tells it to shut up and sets Dean down under the shower head.

He looks at Seth and tries not to sound too annoyed. “I don’t suppose you could wake him up?”

Seth looks at him like he’s gone insane. “Do _you_ want the thing in his head to wake up and get pissed off?”

Roman has to concede that he has a good point.

Seth at least has got the idea, and working together, they manage to pull Dean’s reeking clothes off and throw them into a heap on the other side of the bathroom.  
  
Roman turns the water on, makes sure it’s not too hot, and then he and Seth grab the soap and some cloths and set about the arduous task of cleaning Dean up. God knows, no one else will.  
  
There’s nothing remotely erotic about it. Not when the water’s red and… bits… keep swirling down the drain. Not when Dean’s out like a light and he’s frowning slightly in his sleep and God, Roman hates this, hates all of it, but there’s nothing he can do.  
  
It’s especially not erotic when Roman sees the scars all over Dean’s body. Some are neat lines, obviously surgical, but others are thick, jagged lines, the kind that come from fights. He bites his lip when he sees them, tastes blood and winces. Fuck.  
  
“Oh, Jesus,” Seth whispers, and he runs his finger over one of the longer scars.  
  
It’s stupid, but Roman wants to tell him to take his hands off Dean. There’s no point, though, and he knows it. Instead, he rinses his cloth out and keeps going.  
  
It seemingly takes forever, but finally the water runs clear, and when they towel Dean dry, there’s barely any spots of red on the white.  
  
They get him dry and dressed and drop him unceremoniously on the closest bed, and without asking, Seth grabs more toiletries and fresh clothes and heads into the bathroom before Roman even has a chance to ask if he could go first.  
  
Prick.

The guards brought them food while they were cleaning Dean up, and Roman’s hands are pretty clean, so he grabs one of the trays, sits down on the floor and starts eating.

The food’s not bad, as such. Just plain. Very, very plain- bread rolls, salad with too much lettuce, and a sandwich containing some kind of generic meat.

Still, Roman’s starving, so he doesn’t really care.

Once he’s done, he puts the tray back on the bed next to the others and leans against the door as he considers Dean.  
  
Dean’s so out of it he probably can’t even remember what ‘it’ is. He’s kind of adorable, actually, given how he’s sort of smiling in his sleep and his hair looks really fluffy.  
  
Roman manages to crack an exhausted smile at the sight.  
  
It takes Seth for-fucking-ever to get out of the shower. When he does, Roman winces, because damn, those bruises look a hell of a lot worse now, so vividly black and purple. Someone really hated this guy, and for a second, Roman almost wishes that he’d been the one to fuck him up. Except that’s petty and stupid and he really shouldn’t be thinking like that, so he gives himself a mental slap on the wrist and tells himself not to do it again.  
  
He can see the blond streak now, and it actually isn’t a bad look, though his roots are showing. No matter. Now’s not the time.  
  
Instead, Roman grabs his own set of fresh clothes and walks past Seth without so much as glaring at him.  
  
After all, in some ways, indifference is just as bad as hatred, if not worse.  
  
He pulls off his clothes and throws them onto the heap that appears to be serving as a laundry basket, shuddering as he looks down at the blood on his skin. Even then, it takes him a few minutes to work up the courage to get into the shower, even though it’s perfectly clean and all the blood and gore’s gone now.  
  
He just can’t stop seeing blood and bone chips swirling down the drain in his mind’s eye.  
  
Once he finally gets the nerve, though, it’s easy. He scrubs himself thoroughly, puts extra conditioner in his hair and once he’s rinsed it all off, dried off and got dressed, he’s almost feeling OK.  
  
The feeling evaporates instantly once he emerges from the bathroom.  
  
Seth’s sitting on Dean’s bed, stroking his hair, and Roman sees red, because seriously, hasn’t he already done enough?

“Get the fuck away from him,” he says quietly, not letting any of his anger show in his words.  
  
Seth looks up, startled, and Roman sees him tense, his eyes narrowing. Even injured, it doesn’t look like he’s going to back down.  
  
Roman respects that, but the point still stands.  
  
“I’m not going to hurt him,” Seth says.  
  
“You already did,” Roman replies levelly.  
  
Their eyes lock onto each other.  
  
He’s going to have to be careful. The countermeasure is a wild card he doesn’t need in play, but it is, and he’s just going to have to cope.  
  
So he takes a small step forward and keeps his voice very calm. “Get the fuck away from him. Now.”  
  
Something… happens. Roman has no idea what. His bones ache as he hears/feels the buzz reverberate through his body, and then Dean’s eyes snap open, deep purple.  
  
“Dean?” he asks.  
  
Seth looks down at Dean, gasps almost theatrically, and then the buzz returns, but it’s a hell of a lot stronger now. Roman almost doesn’t feel it when his legs collapse, but he does when he goes down like a sack of sand, hitting the floor hard, the world turning black. He faintly hears something spark, like a fuse blew, and after what seems like an age, the buzz diminishes, but the darkness doesn’t.  
  
“Sorry about that,” Seth says insincerely.  
  
“What the fuck did you just do?” Roman asks, blinking a few times and pulling himself up to a sitting position. The darkness doesn’t diminish, and it takes him a second to realise that the lights have gone.  
  
“Blown out every camera and microphone near us,” Seth replies smugly. “Now we can talk in peace.”

Roman has so many things he wants to say, but he goes for the most obvious one first. “They’re gonna turn up in a few minutes-”  
  
“Better talk fast, then,” Seth replies blithely.  
  
“What the fuck did you do?” Roman asks again.  
  
Seth sounds frustrated. “Look… it’s… ugh, God. It’s the countermeasure. This thing they put in my head. I didn’t know about it, I _swear_. I’m not on their side,” and he’s almost desperate, like he knows Roman won’t believe him.  
  
Roman’s still thinking about that question, so he sets it aside to think about later. “So what does it do? Blows out electronics?”  
  
“It’s a side-effect,” Seth says. “What they wanted was something to control Dean, but what they got was… like… shit. I can knock people out, or slow them down, and I can take out electronics, but that’s it.”  
  
“Huh,” Roman says, thinking this over.  
  
“What about you?” Seth asks. “Who are you, anyway?”  
  
“Roman Reigns. And don’t look at me, I’m normal.”  
  
Seth pauses. “So how’d you get into this?”  
  
Roman shrugs, forgetting that Seth can’t hear him. He opens his mouth to respond, but a raspy voice gets in first.  
  
“Fucker beat me,” Dean says. “Came right the fuck out of nowhere.”  
  
“Dean,” Seth breathes. Then he catches up. “Wait. You’re normal and you beat _Dean?_ ”  
  
Roman shrugs, forgetting that Seth can’t see him. “Yeah, so?”  
  
“He’s a special boy,” Dean drawls.  
  
Roman isn’t sure which one of them he wants to hit first, so instead, he folds his arms. “Cut the bullshit, we need to get serious.”  
  
“Yeah, Seth, we need to get serious,” Dean snarks.  
  
“Shut up,” Seth and Roman say together, and both pause, bemused.  
  
“We don’t have time for this shit,” Roman snaps. “If you want-”  
  
He takes a deep breath, smells something sweet and cloying, and the world goes dark before he can even get another word out.

The last thing he feels is a stab of pain in his head as he hits the ground.

 

  
_“Well?”_

_“Well, what?”_

_“What happened?”_

_“From what I can tell, Tau simply overreacted, that’s all.”_  
  
_“So there’s no danger?”_

_“Not as far as I can tell. What do we do with them?”_

_“Well… let’s wait for a bit. I want to see what happens next. And get everything fixed, for God’s sake."_

 

 

  
Roman wakes up with his head feeling like it’s been wrapped in lead.  
  
It takes him a few minutes to get his brain working, and by the time it’s online, he’s realised three things: he’s still in the same cell, he’s lying on one of the beds now, and most importantly, someone’s talking.  
  
“-thought I’d never see you again,” someone says, and he realises that it’s Dean.  
  
Roman’s first thought is to say something or move, but he decides not to, remaining still, his eyes closed. He wants to hear this.  
  
“I thought I was dead,” Seth says, and there’s this undertone of adoration that makes Roman want to punch something.  
  
That’d be a stupid thing to do, though, so he does nothing.  
  
“You say we can’t afford it, but you lied to me,” Seth says, sounding puzzled. “You told me the guards killed Mu and Beta. You killed them, didn’t you?”  
  
“I… uh… yeah. Sort of. The beast did it,” and there’s an undertone in Dean’s voice, like he’d rather be talking about anything but this.  
  
“Why did you lie to me?” Seth asks, and he sounds genuinely hurt and confused.  
  
“I thought if I told you the truth, you’d never want to talk to me again,” Dean admits glumly.

Roman suppresses a wince. _Ouch._  
  
“No, look, I…”  
  
There’s a pause, and out of nowhere, Roman hears a gasp, and then a long, drawn-out kiss.  
  
God fucking _damn it._  
  
He can’t exactly turn his ears off, so he just lies there and listens to Dean making out with Seth, ignoring the fact that his pants are about two sizes too small right now in favour of mentally punching things.  
  
In fact, he’s so caught up in his angst that he nearly misses it when Dean casually asks “So what do you think of Roman?”  
  
“I don’t like him,” Seth says without hesitation.  
  
_Fuck you too._  
  
Dean laughs. “Thought you might say that.”  
  
“He’s too… God, I don’t even know.”  
  
“You’re jealous,” Dean says tauntingly. “Just because he’s a stallion and you’re a pony.”  
  
It takes every ounce of self-control Roman has to stop him from grinning like a moron at that.  
  
“I am _not_ a pony,” Seth snaps back.  
  
“You so are,” Dean rebuts. “You’re a pretty little pony with your pretty mane and your pretty eyes and-”  
  
He’s cut off by a snarl, and then Roman hears them kiss again.  
  
Yeah, now he’s just a tad annoyed.  
  
“Anyway. He’s a smart guy,” Dean says. “We need him.”  
  
He carefully doesn’t say for what, though anyone with a brain could figure it out.  
  
“This is _stupid_ , Dean,” Seth blurts out. “We’re so _fucked_. I mean, we’re stuck in God knows where, we’ve got no hope, no plans and it’s not like we even know what they’re _doing_ …”

Fuck it.

Roman throws all caution to the wind. He opens his eyes, rolls them and sighs. “Isn’t it obvious? They’re trying to create a one-man army.”  
  
Seth blurts out a startled “ _Fuck!_ ” and then there’s a pause.  
  
“What makes you say that?” Dean asks finally.  
  
“It’s obvious,” Roman says again. “They’ve been throwing Dean and me at all these guys to see who’s better. I went through like seven of their minor guys before they got sick of it. They’re forcing natural selection, the survival of the fittest, so they can take the best bits and, fuck, I guess they’re just building them all into one person.”  
  
“Holy fuck,” Seth mutters. “Why didn’t I realise that?”

Roman shrugs.

“You never went into the arena until yesterday,” Dean replies. “But, wait. They’ve got a one-man army. I’m right fucking here, what more do they want?”  
  
“You’re not thinking like a military man,” Roman tells him. “Hypothetical situation: you’re a general, you’re at war, you’re somewhere abroad and you’ve got a hundred guys with the power of ten thousand at your command. Would you want to be leading a bunch of guys like you? No offense,” he adds quickly. “I mean-”  
  
“No, I get it,” Dean says after a second. “You mean they’d want all of them to be loyal and follow orders and all that shit. But they’ve got the countermeasure-”  
  
“Not good enough,” Roman responds. “The countermeasure’s an on/off switch. They need something that makes their army completely loyal to them, or it’d be suicide.”  
  
“Well, shit,” Seth says slowly. “But what-”  
  
Dean’s eyes turn red.  
  
Roman lets out a startled “ _Fuck!_ ”, nearly falling out of bed. Seth turns and gasps, and Roman hears/feels the _buzz_ again. He shudders, trying to dispel the feeling.  
  
“What the fuck?” he gasps once it’s subsided.  
  
“Now we can talk privately,” Dean says, and Roman wants to kill him.  
  
“Are you fucking insane?” he snaps. “We can’t keep doing this! They’ll catch on- they’ll separate us!”  
  
Dean just shrugs indifferently. “So what else is new?”  
  
“What’s _new_ is that we need to get out of here like _now_ ,” Roman snaps, annoyed.   
  
“Why?” Seth asks.  
  
“Because right now their best prototypes are a maniac who answers to nobody and a failed countermeasure with all the finesse of a hammer. I can guarantee you, they _will_ be trying to make better versions of you two, and once they do, you’re dead,” Roman snarls, because how have they not figured this out by now?  
  
“Oh, _shit,_ ” Dean says after a second..  
  
“What about you?” Seth asks suspiciously, and Roman rolls his eyes. Seriously, what does Seth _think_ is gonna happen?  
  
“I’m living on borrowed time,” Roman admits. “I’m only alive until they realise that there’s no point to keeping me alive. I’ll be the first one dead if we don’t escape.”  
  
“So what do we-”  
  
Roman only registers the scent for a split second: sweet, cloying, and nauseating. The darkness follows in its wake, swallowing him whole.

Fucking chloroform.

 

  
_“Well?”_  
  
_“It seems that they’re getting a bit_ too _smart.”_

_“Should we be worried?”_

_“I doubt it. But just in case… why don’t we introduce Zeta to our_ new _best friend?”_

_“You mean Psi?”_

_“I mean Psi. He’s getting bored; he’s already gone through five groups of red shirts. Zeta’s no match for him, but I’ll give him this much, he’s definitely smarter than the average red shirt.”_

_“How good is Psi?”_

_“I’ll be realistic: Psi’s got super strength, he’s fast, he’s agile and we’ve toughened him up so one hit won’t take him down, but Xi could take him out in about five minutes. But Psi’s far above the rest of the subjects. If we can somehow combine Psi and Xi, we could really be on to something here.”_

 

 

  
Roman wakes up with his head feeling like a kid’s using it as a drum. Normally, he only feels this bad after a long night on various forms of alcohol. Sadly, unlike then, no fun was involved in this case.  
  
Slowly, his senses come back online: hearing reports that there are people talking and moving around nearby. Touch reports that he’s lying on cold, hard, solid ground. Sight reports that _holy fuck that light is fucking bright_ , scent reports that someone nearby used way too much cologne, and taste reports that he’s either eaten rotten pavlova or that gas really worked a number on him.

The sum of these parts is not good.  
  
_They found out_ is his first thought. _I’m dead_ is his second thought. _Shit_ is his third thought, and after that, he decides to just stay put and hope that something comes up.  
  
“Oh, for… get him some water, for fuck’s sake,” someone says, exasperated. “It’s the least we can do, given-”  
  
“Shut _up_ ,” someone else barks, and seconds later, hands are roughly pulling him up to a sitting position. Someone else presses something against his hand, and his eyes are taking way too long to adjust. 

Finally, _finally_ , he manages to focus his eyes: it’s an unopened bottle of water, and it’s quite the welcome sight.  
  
It takes him a few tries to get his hands working, but whoever’s offering him the bottle is patient, thankfully.  
  
It takes him even longer to muster the strength to open the bottle, because it’s one of the annoying ones that look like all the others, but they need a hammer to open and even then it takes five minutes and all your strength. Still, he manages it in the end.  
  
The water’s lukewarm, but Roman doesn’t care because each sip is just perfect: the rotten taste goes away, his head aches less and he can feel the strength slowly coming back into his limbs.  
  
The bottle runs out far too quickly, so he drops it, ignoring whoever was waiting with a hand stretched out to take it from him. They can all get fucked.  
  
While he drank, he analysed: _assess and act, assess and attack_. The results are not pleasing in the slightest.

If they wanted to execute him, they’d just shoot him while he was out. So clearly they’re trying to get a bit of use out of him anyway, and given that he’s in the arena…  
  
Roman closes his eyes as he realises the inevitable: even if he wins this fight, they’ll just shoot him anyway.  
  
Shit.  
  
For a second, he feels like his mind’s split in two: one half wants to accept the inevitable, and the other is insisting that there must be some way to escape.  
  
He lets them argue for a second, and then a single memory rises to the surface: his first fight, when he vowed that he would find a way out.  
  
“-won’t last long against Psi,” he hears someone say dismissively in the background.  
  
_Oh,_ won’t I?  
  
Roman clenches his fists, and makes what could well be his last real decision: even if they shoot him after this fight, no way in _hell_ is he going to go out without giving them hell first.  
  
So he climbs to his feet, stretches, cracks his knuckles and smiles. “Shall we dance, then?” he asks the room at large, and he’s inordinately satisfied at the ensuing silence.  
  
Someone to his left chuckles, and Roman turns to see the amused man. It’s hardly a surprise, really, given that he seems to be around whenever Roman’s got a fight.  
  
“I’ll give you this,” he says regretfully. “You’ve got balls. It’s a pity, really, given how little time you’ve got left.”  
  
God, what an asshole. “Well, you could always _not kill me,”_ Roman suggests. “I know it’s a revolutionary idea, but-”  
  
“I wish I could,” the amused man admits, looking genuinely regretful. “I’ve got my orders, though.”  
  
Roman knows he’s pushing it, but he’s got nothing to lose anyway, so he gives the man a Hitler salute. “I’m sure you do.”  
  
The man stiffens, and then lets out a bark of a laugh. “It’s been a pleasure knowing you, Subject Zeta. I mean that honestly.”  
  
Roman summons up all the class and sophistication that he has left after sharing a cell with Dean Ambrose for more than five minutes and channels it into his response. “Fuck you too, asshole.”  
  
Without waiting for a response, he walks to the ladder and descends into the otherwise-empty arena.  
  
He isn’t left waiting for long. A few minutes later, a squad of guards and their subject approaches the ladder, and Roman looks up at the subject intently.  
  
Yeah, this guy is _definitely_ a bona fide asshole.  
  
He’s tall, skinny, short brown hair and not wholly unattractive, but he’s got the flat, emotionless eyes of a psychopath, and they narrow as he takes in the arena.  
  
The psycho turns to the nearest scientist, and his voice is surprisingly deep. “What, only one? Not cool, guys, not cool.”  
  
“We thought we’d put you up against a more… _challenging_ opponent,” the scientist says, cringing just a little. 

She’s scared of him. She knows it, Roman knows it, and the psycho definitely knows it, because he leans in and grins at her, making her flinch and move away.

Great. So not only is he a dickbag, but he’s a _petty_ dickbag. The best kind.  
  
The psycho raises his eyebrows. “Oh, this should be good, then.”  
  
_Assess and attack._

Roman has an idea.

The psycho doesn’t seem to be too adroit on ladders. He’s descending slowly, his back to the arena, taking each rung one at a time.  
  
So once the guy gets to the bottom and turns around, Roman strikes, punching the guy square in the throat with all his strength.  
  
Of course, it’s not that easy. It never is. His fist impacts, but instead of the choked gasp he expected, the psycho just _laughs_.

Oh, _shit._  
  
“Oh, you’re good,” the psycho says admiringly, looking Roman up and down in a way that makes his skin crawl. “I’m gonna _love_ taking you apart.”  
  
Roman’s already darted backwards, safely out of reach, but he’s got a nasty feeling that this isn’t gonna go well.  
  
The guy runs at him, and Roman sidesteps, tries to punch him as he goes past, but the guy’s too fast, he’s _just_ out of reach.

Yeah, this isn’t going to end well.  
  
The guy runs at him again, and this time Roman tries to meet him with a kick to the stomach, but the guy dodges just in time, and Roman nearly falls on his ass. He manages to drop to one knee instead, but he takes it hard, and pain bursts across his kneecap, making him bite back a curse.  
  
“Aw, don’t be like that,” the psycho drawls, and there’s a sick note of satisfaction in his voice. “Don’t give up on me yet, honey.”  
  
Roman gets to his feet, glowers, puts his weight on his bad leg to see how that goes.

It’s… not _good_ , but he can manage.  
  
Unfortunately, the only thing he can manage is dodging, because he’s fucked if he knows what else to do. He ducks and weaves, just managing to avoid the psycho’s attacks, but with every miss, the psycho gets noticeably angrier, and Roman’s leg is _really fucking hurting._  
  
“Figures,” the psycho sneers when they next grind to a halt. “Guess a pretty boy like you doesn’t have any real moves.” He’s aiming for disdain, but instead, he seems angry. Whether it’s because he hasn’t killed Roman yet or because Roman’s managing to outpace him is unknown, but either way, it doesn’t matter. Angry is good. Angry people make mistakes, don’t watch their backs, let their guard down.  
  
So Roman needles him some more. “Oh, like you do? All you’re doing is running at me. I’m so in awe of your sophisticated attacks,” and he throws all the sarcasm he can muster into the last two words.  
  
The psycho’s eyes flash. “Shut up.”  
  
_Can’t handle criticism,_ Roman thinks. _Thinks everything should be handed to him. Probably angry that he’s not in an easy fight._  
  
“You’re delusional if you think you can beat _me_ ,” the psycho snarls, his eyes flashing and his voice angry. 

Bingo. One major case of egotism, right there. Possible narcissist, but that’s a question for later. If there’s a later.  
  
“And you’re delusional if you think you’re going to live,” Roman says bluntly. “They’ll axe you as soon as they come up with someone better. In fact, they already have- I’ve been sharing a cell with him. Compared to him, you’re a two-year-old trying to punch a teddy bear. He’d take you apart in-”  
  
“Shut your _mouth_ ,” the psycho roars, and Roman almost laughs, because holy _shit_ does this guy need a deflated ego, stat.  
  
“Or what, you’ll give me a boo-boo?” Roman taunts.  
  
The psycho _moves_ , and fuck, he’s so fast that Roman barely has time to dodge before his fist slams into the concrete where Roman’s head was, sending chunks flying.  
  
_Oh, shit._

Angry people make mistakes, true. But angry superpowered people… yeah. No.

Belatedly, Roman realises that he’s made a very, very big mistake.

Before he can try escaping, the psycho grabs him and hurls him to the ground, sending Roman sprawling over the concrete. His head hits the ground, and stars burst behind his eyes, leaving flashes of light in his vision.  
  
The psycho speaks, but he sounds like he’s far away, even when he’s standing only a few meters from Roman. Not a good sign.

“Not so tough now, are you, pretty boy?” he says. “Maybe I’ll have a little fun with you before I kill you. I mean, you’re pretty now, but I bet you’ll look even better with my cock in your mouth-”

For a second, Roman feels like his blood has frozen solid, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from freaking the fuck out.  
  
He’s still dazed, though, and he can’t resist when the psycho grabs him by the hair and hauls him up to his knees. Desperately, he looks up at the onlookers, searching for any sign that they might help him, but all of them stare down impassively.

(Maybe it’s revenge, some small part of his mind mutters. For the backtalk, for surviving this long, for defying the odds- whatever. Or maybe they’re all just assholes. It’s probably that.)  
  
“We’re gonna have _fun_ , pretty boy,” the psycho snarls, and his hands tighten, nearly ripping Roman’s hair out, sending pain like fire across his scalp, pain that makes him curse and groan… and it knocks him out of his daze.  
  
The psycho leans down until he’s looking straight into Roman’s eyes. “Scream for me, baby,” he says.  
  
_Assess and attack._  
  
In the next second, Roman realises three things: one, the psycho’s letting his sadism override his brain, meaning two, he obviously doesn’t consider Roman to be any kind of threat, which is too bad for him, because three, he’s got his hands tangled in Roman’s hair, but Roman’s hands are otherwise free.  
  
_Checkmate._  
  
Roman winces in anticipation, braces himself and punches the psycho in his junk as hard as he can.

It’s a gamble- a direct hit to the throat made him laugh, after all- but super-tough or not, a punch to the nuts hurts like a motherfucker. And it’s a gamble that pays off: the psycho screams and crumples to the floor, ripping out a good chunk of Roman’s hair as he falls.

The pain’s bad, but it’s accompanied by a rush of adrenaline, so Roman takes the opportunity to punch the psycho in the nose, repeating the blow until he feels it break.  
  
“Who’s laughing now, asshole?” he snarls, ignoring the psycho’s screams. Fucking asshole deserved it.  
  
Better end it now, then. Before he recovers.  
  
And once again, it’s easy. Too easy. With the psycho effectively disabled, Roman snaps his neck and it’s over, the corpse slumping to the floor like a rag doll.

All at once, the pain hits him like a sledgehammer: his knee, his scalp, his shoulder when the asshole threw him to the ground. But it all comes second to the thought running through his mind.  
  
_It shouldn’t be this easy. Killing shouldn’t be this easy._  
  
It shouldn’t. He knows it shouldn’t. But it’s not like it matters, anyway, because when he looks up, the onlookers are all wearing expressions of anger, surprise, shock, and not a one is positive.  
  
_Fuck you too._  
  
“The fuck are you looking at?” he calls up to them as he gets to his feet.  
  
For a second, there’s only silence, and then the sound of someone applauding. Roman’s not surprised in the slightest when the amused man appears, though he is surprised at how much the man’s grinning.  
  
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” he admits with a shrug. “But by God, you’re good.”  
  
Roman snorts, trying to conceal the pain. “Thanks for the confidence.”  
  
He’s amazed that he can keep his voice level, given that he’s hurting and he probably has a life expectancy of less than five minutes, but if he has to die, then he’ll go out like a badass.  
  
“Fuck it,” the amused man says. “Just hold on while I make this phone call. That goes for all of you, too,” he adds, looking around him, and while his colleagues still look pissed, none of them move.  
  
Roman frowns, but before he can say anything, the amused man pulls a phone from a pocket and dials a number.  
  
Everyone’s looking at him now, but all his attention seems fixed on the phone. “Hello? It’s Jean… yeah, have you been… you have. Good. Can we not do something for Zeta? Something other than shooting him, I mean? Please? You’ve seen how he went, surely…”  
  
Roman isn’t holding his breath.  
  
The amused man- Jean?- has lowered his voice, and Roman strains to hear something, anything, but to no avail. Jean’s simply too far away.  
  
Finally, Jean walks back over to the railing, and his expression tells Roman one thing: he’s fucked.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jean says regretfully. “I mean that. There’s just nothing I can do.”  
  
Roman doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response.  
  
“Any last words?” Jean asks.  
  
Roman thinks for a second, and then nods. “Yeah, I got something to say,” he says. “You assholes can say you’re doing this for science, for society, whatever- you could find a cure for cancer from this and it’s never gonna change the fact that you’re a pack of murdering fuckers. And I hope you see every single one of our faces when you close your eyes for the rest of your lives. So come on. The fuck are you waiting for?”  
  
There’s a _click_ from behind him. Roman turns and looks up, right into the line of the sniper above.  
  
_Bam._  
  
_Thud._

  
  
Seth Rollins is not a happy bunny. 

It’s not just that he’s found out that the countermeasure he was looking for was in his head the whole time. It’s not just that he found out that they put the fucking thing in his head to keep Dean under control- though  _why_ they put it in  _Seth's_ head, he doesn't know. It's not just that he spent the past week being taught to use it by a pack of scientists who were fascinated by how the countermeasure worked in ways that were the opposite of how they'd intended it to work, and as a result couldn't actually teach Seth anything, so he had to teach himself. And it's not just that as an 'encouragement' to do better, he spent the past week living in a cell full of assholes who beat him up at the slightest opportunity for what they saw as 'collaborating' with the scientists, so he had to learn faster so he could use the countermeasure to knock them out.  
  
No, it’s the fact that aside from all that, he’s now stuck in the arena with this giant of a man, a belligerent dick who looks like he wants to break the few remaining unbroken ribs in Seth’s body. And it hurts like a bitch just to breathe, so there’s that.  
  
Oh, and there’s the bit where Dean’s suddenly a psychopath who can rip people apart with his bare hands, which is something Seth never wanted to so much as fathom, so that just makes it even better.  
  
And now he and this belligerent dick are having a staring match. Seth has never liked this sort of machismo bullshit, but he’s injured and he knows he can’t afford to look weak right now. Not if he has to protect Dean.  
  
So he stares back, does his best not to blink, and even when the asshole is slowly moving closer, he doesn’t back down.  
  
Seth isn’t sure what to be more worried about: the fact that this guy could probably break bones before he has time to zap him, or the fact that Dean and this guy obviously know each other.   
  
It’s not that Seth thinks that Dean would just throw himself at anyone who looks at him twice. It’s more that… well. Seth thought the lab coats were going to kill him when they separated him and Dean, and he’s willing to bet that Dean thought the same way. And it’s not like Dean has anyone else in here who actually gives a fuck about him.

(Excepting the beast, but it doesn’t count. It doesn’t even have its own body.)  
  
So in other words, this could get very, very complicated.  
  
Now they’re standing so close their chests are touching, and for a second Seth isn’t sure if they’re going to fight or kiss. Apparently, one of the lab coats thinks the same way, because she cracks a bad joke and then tells them to take Dean and get the fuck out.  
  
The other guy gives Seth a contemptuous glare and then starts hauling Dean up the ladder. As much as Seth wants to help, he doesn’t- mostly because of his injuries, but also because turning it into a two-man job would require conversation and co-operation, neither of which he’s willing to do right now.  
  
Instead, he waits at the bottom of the ladder, keeping the countermeasure on so Dean won’t wake up and start thrashing. That would be a nightmare. 

Well. A worse nightmare than the one they’re in right now, that is.  
  
Once the other guy has hauled Dean up the ladder, Seth takes a deep breath and starts climbing. It’s a bitch of a job, and it takes him a while to get to the top, especially since there’s drops of blood on the rungs. Climbing with one hand is bad, but climbing up a slippery ladder with one hand is much, much worse. 

God, would it have killed these assholes to put in an elevator?  
  
He doesn’t even get the chance to rest for a second. Instead, he has to help the other guy carry Dean back, and that’s even worse, because Dean’s floppy and heavy and he stinks like they just pulled him out of a dumpster, but with more blood, and as much as Seth would like to wake Dean up, he’s more than a bit worried that Dean would flip out and destroy everything.

That, to say the least, would be problematic.  
  
At least this cell’s a new one. It’s nice and clean, though by the time Seth and the other guy are done cleaning Dean up, it’s not anymore. It’s really not.  
  
Seth knows it’s a bitchy thing to do, but once they’ve got Dean out and dressed and safely on his own bed, he takes the shower first.  
  
And yeah, OK, maybe he takes a while, but trying to get blood off you when one side is just one massive ache is a bitch of a job.  
  
Whatever. At least when he gets out, he gets Dean to himself for a while.  
  
The guards left them food, so once he’s done eating, he sits down on the bed next to Dean’s and ponders a single question: Do I let Dean wake up or not?  
  
On the one hand, he feels like Dean should be included in whatever happens when the asshole gets out of the shower, whether it’s a mature discussion among adults or a heated fight. On the other hand, Seth isn’t sure that he has the energy to handle a pissed-off Dean.  
  
And besides, he likes watching Dean sleep. It’s nice. One of the few times when he doesn’t look hunted, or beaten down, or in pain. 

He’s actually smiling in his sleep, even.  
  
Seth reaches over and starts stroking Dean’s hair, and it’s a sweet little moment, and he’s almost relaxed, and-  
  
“Get the fuck away from him.”  
  
Seth jerks back, startled, and when he realises who’s talking, he glares. _No. Fuck you._  
  
As much as he’d like to say that, he figures that this asshole probably has Dean’s welfare in mind, and Seth can’t really hold that against him.  
  
So he goes for the civilised option. “I’m not going to hurt him.”  
  
“You already did,” asshole says, and Seth refuses to back down on this one.

At first he thinks it’s going to be another staring match, but instead, asshole somehow manages to make his glare even worse. “Get the fuck away from him. Now.”

Seth doesn’t get worried. Instead, he crosses his fingers and turns the countermeasure off.

He can feel it when Dean wakes up, but he pretends he hasn’t noticed. Instead, he maintains the stare, even when the asshole is obviously looking away.

“Dean?”

Seth looks down at Dean and his purple eyes and gasps. Maybe it’s a bit over the top, but he knows the cameras are watching, so he’s got to make it look good. He flips the countermeasure onto _high_ and lets loose for a couple of seconds. It’s not a long time, but it’s more than enough to get the job done.  
  
Dean’s eyes go blue, and Seth hears the electric crack as the cameras, microphones and lights all short out. He looks around, hoping that nothing’s caught fire, but at least he can’t smell any smoke.

The _thud_ from the asshole hitting the floor is admittedly pretty satisfying, as well.

“Sorry about that,” Seth says, and he doesn’t even bother to sound sincere.

“What the fuck did you just do?” the asshole asks, sounding sore.  
  
“Blown out every camera and microphone near us,” Seth replies, and he knows he’s sounding like a smug douche, but fuck it. It’s pretty awesome, what he can do, and he’s not going to pretend otherwise. “Now we can talk in peace.”  
  
The asshole, to his credit, seems to be pragmatic. “They’re gonna turn up in a few minutes-”  
  
“Better talk fast, then,” Seth says, shrugging.

All right, that’s not fair. He knows that if they talk, it has to be private, and that they’re running on borrowed time now. This is more like a test. Dean trusts this guy, but if they’re going to be a trio, then Seth wants to know what this guy’s like.  
  
“What the fuck did you do?” the asshole asks, and Seth rolls his eyes. Yeah, he’s lost a few points for wasting time, and they’re barely a minute into the conversation.

Still, it’s a fair question. “Look… it’s… ugh, God. It’s the countermeasure. This thing they put in my head. I didn’t know about it, I _swear_. I’m not on their side.”  
  
“You can blow out electronics?” asshole asks, and Seth rolls his eyes again, because _duh_.  
  
“It’s a side-effect,” Seth says calmly. “What they wanted was something to control Dean, but what they got was… like… shit. I can knock people out, or slow them down, and I can take out electronics, but that’s it.”  
  
“Huh,” the asshole replies. Real master of words, this one.  
  
“What about you?” Seth asks, trying to take control of the conversation. “Who are you, anyway?”  
  
“Roman Reigns. And don’t look at me, I’m normal.”  
  
Seth’s admittedly a bit confused. “So how’d you get into this?”

Before asshole/Roman can reply, Dean speaks up, and Seth jumps, because he kind of forgot that Dean was there, given how quiet he’s being. “Fucker beat me. Came right the fuck out of nowhere.”  
  
“Dean,” Seth breathes. _Thank God._ Then his mind catches up. “Wait. You’re normal and you beat _Dean?_ ”

“Yeah, so?” Roman asks indifferently, and Seth wants to punch him. Smug shit. 

Wait. That’s just a bit hypocritical, isn’t it… damn.  
  
“He’s a special boy,” Dean drawls, and for a moment, Seth wants to gag him.

From the sounds of things, Roman feels the same way. “Cut the bullshit, we need to get serious.”

“Yeah, Seth, we need to get serious,” Dean snarks.  
  
“Shut up,” Seth and Roman say together, and Seth’s more than a bit appalled at that.  
  
“We don’t have time for this shit,” Roman snaps. “If you want-”  
  
Seth’s world vanishes, and he doesn’t even get time to wonder why before he’s out of it.

 

  
He’s woken by someone shaking his shoulder, and he groans, tries to lift his other arm and nearly shrieks when pain explodes across his left side.  
  
“Shit,” the someone says, and he realises belatedly that it’s Dean. “Sorry.”  
  
Seth manages to get his eyes open, and the sight that meets his eyes makes him smile, because it’s Dean and he doesn’t think there’s ever going to be a time when looking at Dean won’t make him smile.  
  
“Are you OK?” Dean asks, and Seth manages a nod, even though he’s not quite sure that he is.  
  
“Good. Move over,” Dean says, and for a second, Seth has no idea what he’s talking about. He manages to move over, and Dean slides into the bed next to him.  
  
Oh, that’s good.  
  
For a second, they just lie there, staring at the ceiling, saying nothing, enjoying each other’s presence.  
  
“So,” Dean ventures finally. “How was your week?”  
  
Seth barks out a laugh and winces at the pain. “Shit. How was yours?”  
  
“Better. I guess.”  
  
Seth looks at him. “And this guy?” 

“It’s not what you think,” Dean says slowly.  
  
“Then what is it?” Seth asks him pointedly.  
  
“He beat me, they threw us in together, I was pissed off, we had fuck all to do-”  
  
Seth really doesn’t want to continue down this path. “Can we trust him?”  
  
Dean thinks for a second, and then nods slowly. “He just wants to get out of here. And he knows he’s the disposable one. Just… fuck.”  
  
Seth looks at him silently.  
  
“Don’t make this into a shitfight,” Dean says pleadingly. “We can’t afford that.”  
  
Dean Ambrose, Voice of Reason. Seth’s head nearly explodes at the thought.  
  
“All right,” Seth says slowly. “I’ll play nice. But-”  
  
Before he can get another word out, Dean kisses him, and Seth’s brain turns off for a second.  
  
Dean’s kissing him eagerly, almost desperately, and Seth gets as close as he can as he kisses back, to the point that he’s almost grinding up against Dean.  
  
_Oh_ fuck _yeah._  
  
“Isn’t that a bit much?” he manages to ask idly once they stop to breathe.  
  
“I thought I’d never see you again,” Dean replies solemnly.  
  
“I thought I was dead,” Seth admits. He pauses, and a thought comes to him, something he’s wanted to ask for a while. “You say we can’t afford it, but you lied to me. You told me the guards killed Mu and Beta. You killed them, didn’t you?”  
  
“I… uh… yeah. Sort of. The beast did it,” Dean says, looking away, and somehow that’s the worst part, the fact that Dean won’t even look him in the eye. He doesn’t care about the lie, he just wants to know _why._  
  
“Why did you lie to me?” Seth asks, and he lets some of the hurt into his tone.  
  
“I thought if I told you the truth, you’d never want to talk to me again,” Dean mumbles, and he still won’t look up.  
  
“No, look, I…”

It’s not a serious attempt to talk. Instead, Seth lets his voice die out, and then he slides a hand under Dean’s chin and pushes his head up, forcing their eyes to meet.  
  
In fact, their eyes meet for just a second, and then Dean kisses him again.

Some back corner of Seth’s mind realises that Dean’s just trying to distract him, but the rest of him is sufficiently distracted to not care.

Dean kisses him senseless, and then he casually asks “So, what do you think of Roman?” while Seth’s still recovering.  
  
Seth doesn’t even need to think about it. “I don’t like him.”  
  
Dean laughs, and Seth glares. “Thought you might say that.”  
  
“He’s too… God, I don’t even know,” Seth admits. He can’t really put it into words.

It’s not just that Roman and Dean had all that time alone. It’s not just that Roman’s muscular and gorgeous and yeah, in different circumstances Seth could see himself going for Roman too. It’s more that…

 Fuck.

“You’re jealous,” Dean says in a sing-song voice. “Just because he’s a stallion and you’re a pony.”  
  
It takes every ounce of self-control Seth has to stop himself from doing _something_ to shut Dean up.

“I am _not_ a pony,” he snaps back instead.  
  
“You so are,” Dean says, smirking. “You’re a pretty little pony with your pretty mane and your pretty eyes and-”  
  
Seth snarls, and then he kisses Dean hard. Anything to shut him up.

Belatedly, he realises that this was probably what Dean was aiming for, but he’s having trouble caring.  
  
“Anyway. He’s a smart guy,” Dean says, breaking away from Seth. “We need him.”

Seth groans. “This is _stupid_ , Dean. We’re so _fucked_. I mean, we’re stuck in God knows where, we’ve got no hope, no plans and it’s not like we even know what they’re _doing_ …”  
  
Roman’s voice comes out of nowhere. “Isn’t it obvious? They’re trying to create a one-man army.”  
  
Seth nearly falls out of bed, he’s that surprised. Dean grabs his arm, pulls him back, and then they both consider it.  
  
“What makes you say that?” Dean asks finally, and Seth listens with growing horror as Roman talks.

Because _holy fuck_ , it was so obvious, and he never saw it. How could he not see it?

But, shit, what are they going to do now?  
  
He’s about to ask exactly that when out of nowhere, Roman jumps and shouts “ _Fuck!_ ” and when Seth looks down, he realises that the beast is back.

 He reacts on instinct, flipping the countermeasure on to high. The newly-replaced lights short out, and though he’s instantly turned it off, he instinctively reaches out to make sure Dean doesn’t fall out of bed.

In hindsight, he needs to stop reacting on instinct.

At the very least, he should give the beast a chance to get a word or two out.  
  
“What the fuck?” Roman says, and Seth doesn’t blame him.  
  
“Now we can talk privately,” Dean says, and Seth has never heard anything so stupid in his life.  
  
Apparently, Roman feels the same way. “Are you fucking insane? We can’t keep doing this! They’ll catch on- they’ll separate us!”  
  
Dean doesn’t even sound like he’s taking it seriously, and Seth groans as he asks “So what else is new?”  
  
“What’s _new_ is that we need to get out of here like _now_ ,” Roman says, and it’s the urgency in his tone that makes Seth sit up and take notice.  
  
“Why?” he asks warily.  
  
“Because right now their best prototypes are a maniac who answers to nobody and a failed countermeasure with all the finesse of a hammer. I can guarantee you, they will be trying to make better versions of you two, and once they do, you’re dead,” Roman growls, and Seth’s blood runs cold, because he knows it’s true.  
  
“Oh, _shit,_ ” Dean says with dawning horror.  
  
“What about you?” Seth asks tentatively, his mind working at triple its usual speed as he tries to accommodate this new information.  
  
“I’m living on borrowed time,” Roman replies, and Seth almost winces, because it’s obvious that he’s trying to conceal his despair, and failing. “I’m only alive until they realise that there’s no point to keeping me alive. I’ll be the first one dead if we don’t escape.”  
  
“So what do we-”  
  
Seth smells the gas, and his last thought before he’s out is that somehow, they must have heard what they were saying. He must have missed a microphone. Or maybe they’re just getting paranoid.  
  
Either way, they’re all fucked.

 

  
_“-too valuable, so-”_

_“-not what… and then if we…”_

Everything hurts.  
  
Reality swims in and out of Seth’s head, seemingly at random.  
  
Above him, rainclouds form, tiny wisps of pale, pearly grey, and then thicken and darken until they’re as huge and as black as tar.  
  
The first drops fall in seconds, big and black and heavy as lead, and they land on his face and cling to his skin, pleasantly cool, sending chills through him like a pebble falling through the ocean.  
  
Seth turns his face up to the distant sun and smiles, feeling the warmth on his skin, piercing through the black rain.  
  
_“-half-tested procedure and experimental sedatives, what can-”_

 _“-too dangerous otherwise-”_  
  
More drops fall, landing on his hair, his face, the distant ground. Seth reaches up and feels the black rain landing on his fingers, tiny droplets that spread the coolness through his body.  
  
A face appears in his mind, and he can’t quite remember who it belongs to, or why he should care.  
  
For a second, clouds cover his eyes, their whiteness fogging up his brain, and he can’t see.  
  
_“If it wears off…”_

_“It won’t. We put it in his head for a-”_

He brings his hands to his eyes, rubs them experimentally, but his sight does not return. The thought does not alarm him. Instead, he flinches slightly as a raindrop lands on the back of his neck and slides down under his shirt.  
  
More droplets land on his fingers, and he touches one wet fingertip to his eyelid.  
  
The coolness spreads through his eyelid and touches his eye, spreading through his body until it reaches his brain.  
  
And he can see again.  
  
_“This could_ kill _him, for fuck’s-”_  
  
_“So? We can make another-”_  
  
He looks down.  
  
He stands on the empty air. Far below him lies the ground, rolling green hills punctuated by fields and roads. Apart from the trees, he can’t see any other living things, but he doesn’t mind.  
  
He’s not sure how he’s standing on empty air, but that’s OK.

In the end, nothing matters.  
  
Around him, black rain falls, landing on the ground and pooling.  
  
_“-sure you don’t ‘forget’ any restraints, did Morgan tell you-”_  
  
_“Yeah, yeah, she told me-”_  
  
The rain falls faster, and Seth watches, just a little bemused, as it starts to form larger and larger pools, until he can’t see the ground any more, just the black water.  
  
Despite their being no natural boundary in sight, the water rises.  
  
The rain intensifies, and soon he’s soaked to the core, the coolness making him feel oddly detached.  
  
_“-wiring his whole mind… there’s no way this can’t-”_

 _“He’s too dangerous otherwise. He_ knows _, Sam.”_  
  
The water rises.  
  
Seth has an odd feeling as it surges up under him. Like he should be worried, or afraid, or something. But he can’t move, and he can’t muster up any feelings, either, and he’s not sure why he should.  
  
Before long, he’s standing on the water, and it seems to rise faster by the second, swallowing his feet, then his legs, then his waist-  
  
And each part it consumes loses its feeling.

Seth doesn’t even feel afraid when it reaches his neck.

" _-_ _make him docile, change his whole personality, he'll do whatever we want once this is done, so you-"_

"- _that's just fu-"_

Instead, he raises his face to the distant sun and smiles, even when the water flows into his eyes.  
  
And then he’s gone.  
  
_“Put him down, then- wait. What’s…”_

 _“I think…”_  
  
_“Oh,_ shit _-”_  
  
**_Thud._**

 

  
  
Seth Rollins is _alive._  
  
He opens his eyes to pitch blackness, his skin is crawling and there’s something heavy on top of him, but fuck it, he’s alive and breathing and nothing can stop him now.  
  
Well, nothing except for whatever the fuck it is that’s squashing him, that is.  
  
It takes him some hard effort, but he manages to roll to the right, letting the weight on top of him fall heavily to the ground.  
  
The fact that he can’t see is a real bitch. Unlike Dean, he doesn’t have any kind of enhanced senses, and the countermeasure’s no help. It’s like a control box in his head with a dial that goes from 0 to 10. He can direct it, but it doesn’t tell him if there’s actually anything nearby to direct it at. The scientists were no help, because they genuinely seemed to have no idea about how it worked, and he had to figure it all out as he went along.  
  
So he manages to get to his hands and knees, and as he does, it hits him: he’s not in pain any more. He presses his left hand against his ribs, and feels not even a twinge.

That is a hell of a relief.

 From there, he slowly gets to his feet, listening hard.  
  
Nothing’s moving nearby, so he turns his head, looking for light.  
  
On the one hand, the safest thing to do would be to keep the countermeasure on constantly, so anyone who comes close would get knocked out before they could do anything.  
  
On the other hand, if he keeps it on that high, he’ll knock out the lights instantly, so he’ll trip and fall and maybe break something- and unlike Dean, he can’t heal.  
  
And on the other other hand, knocking out the lights won’t stop a guard with night-vision and a sniper rifle.  
  
He turns the countermeasure off.  
  
Slowly, carefully, he starts to feel his way along the wall, going hand over hand until finally he sees light in the distance.  
  
It’s a long way off.  
  
_Shit,_ he thinks. _Since when could I reach that far?_

Maybe it’s something to do with the black rain. He has no idea what the fuck happened there, only that it’s the most real dream he’s had since… ever, really.

But there’s no time for that now. Instead, he keeps walking until he finally emerges into the light, its brightness making him wince and turn away.  
  
He knows it’ll take him a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, so he takes the opportunity to think.  
  
The way he sees it, he has three options right now: rescue Dean, rescue Roman, or say ‘fuck it’ and try to get out by himself.  
  
Arguably, all three are plausible if he doesn’t make a big mistake with the countermeasure. But then there’s the other thing.  
  
On the one hand, yeah, he doesn’t like Roman at all. He really doesn’t. But Seth’s a man with standards, and he wouldn’t leave even a bona fide asshole like Roman to die here. Unfortunately, since they were obviously separated, Seth can only think of two things that might be happening to Roman: either the scientists will give Roman superpowers (probably not) or they’ll kill him (probably yes). And what’s worse is that Seth has no idea how long it’s been, so for all he knows, Roman’s already dead.  
  
Then again, there’s Dean. Seth highly doubts that they’ll kill him, but he remembers hearing one of the assholes carrying him saying something about _rewiring_ in between the black rain falling, and if that means what he thinks it means, then Dean’s going to be in a lot of trouble, especially if they’re keeping him sedated. Yeah, Seth and the countermeasure aren’t there to keep the beast knocked out, but he has no doubt that they have other ways to keep Dean quiet.  
  
Then there’s the third problem: he has no idea where the fuck he’s going, where either of them is, or how to get out. And yeah, he blew the cameras out with the lights, but he knows there are working cameras nearby, so they know where he is.  
  
Seth is nothing but a quick thinker, and his mind is working at double time. He formulates a plan in seconds: first, he’ll wait for them, and second…  
  
He focuses on the nearest camera, and turns the countermeasure up.  
  
It’s not long before the lights start to flicker.  
  
There’s no obvious sign from the camera, but he knows it has to be working.  
  
Well, OK, he really hopes it’s working.  
  
He turns it up a little, and the flickering gets a lot more dramatic.  
  
Shit.  
  
OK.  
  
Guess it’s time for Plan B.  
  
He knows it’s a shot in the dark, but he focuses on the camera, trying to force the countermeasure’s effects into something a lot smaller than ‘the whole of the space around him’. He’s tried it before, and it worked a few times, so he _thinks_ he knows what to do.

He thinks. 

In theory.

 Maybe.

It… sort of works, in that the camera instantly starts sparking and smoking.  
  
Unfortunately, so do the lights near it.  
  
Fuck.  
  
Worse, just trying makes Seth’s legs feel weak, and he slumps back against the wall, trying not to fall.  
  
He’s still recovering when he hears footsteps.  
  
He turns his head and scowls: it’s a squad of guards and- oh. Oh, that’s good.  
  
A squad of guards and two scientists.  
  
Seth turns the countermeasure onto medium and blasts them all before they can even get close.  
  
They fall like dead leaves to the ground, the lights beginning to flicker, and Seth only needs a second to make sure that they’re still alive.  
  
Perfect.  
  
He manages to drag the scientists a few metres away, and then he turns back to the guards.  
  
_I am not going to fuck this up._  
  
He focuses the countermeasure again, but this time he turns it into a half circle, one that extends away from the scientists. He snaps the dial up to its highest point, just for a second, and the lights go out, but only the ones that were meant to.  
  
He grins, ignoring the sweat streaking down his face, and checks the guards. They’re all dead, and the scientists are still alive.  
  
_Perfect._  
  
His legs fold out from under him before he gets a chance to gloat, and it takes him a second to stop himself from passing out.  
  
Once he’s recovered, though, he drags the scientists back into the spot where the dark and light mix- hopefully, far enough away from the microphones and cameras that they can’t hear him.  
  
Then he picks one and starts slapping him.  
  
The countermeasure’s off, and it’s not long before the scientist awakes. He’s a tall, solid man with close-cropped hair, and he goes from nonplussed to terrified in a second when he realises what’s happening.  
  
“I’ll spell it out for you,” Seth says bluntly. “These guards are dead. The cameras and microphones are gone. Nobody is coming to help you. So you’re gonna tell me what happened to Subject Xi and Subject Zeta, or I’m gonna start breaking your bones.”

Brutal? Inhumane? Maybe. But right now, it’s Seth, Dean and Roman or these guys, and considering how much blood these people have on their hands, Seth knows whose side he’s on- and how much mercy he’s prepared to show them.  
  
The man shakes his head a few times, utterly terrified, but Seth takes his hand, selects a finger and starts bending it back, and suddenly he’s all too happy to talk.  
  
“They froze Xi,” he babbles. “And they gave Zeta to Psi, that’s all I know, I swear!”  
  
Seth’s eyes blaze. “They _froze_ Xi.”  
  
The scientist nods frantically, and after a second, he realises that Seth obviously has no idea what he means. “It’s a term- it’s for troublesome subjects. We keep them constantly sedated until we need to use them.”  
  
“But you don’t hurt them,” Seth says slowly.  
  
“No,” the man gasps. “No, I swear, I swear we don’t! Xi should be fine, they weren’t planning anything-”  
  
“Who is Psi?” Seth asks quietly.  
  
“He’s the new, the newest prototype, sort of like another Xi-”  
  
Then Roman’s dead. Shit. Dean’s gonna be so pissed.  
  
“When?” Seth asks, his voice level.  
  
The scientist shrugs, looking around frantically. “Maybe… fuck, maybe fifteen minutes ago?”  
  
Then maybe there’s a chance after all.

Seth makes his decision in an instant.  
  
“Where?” Seth asks.  
  
“It’s not far, but- you- there’s no-”  
  
Seth gets up in one smooth movement and hauls the babbling man to his feet. “You’re going to take me to where they took Zeta, right now. If you so much as call for help, I swear to God I will make your death as painful as I possibly can. _Move._ ”  
  
The scientist moves.

 

  
  
It’s not a long trip, maybe five minutes in total, but to Seth, it feels like hours, just endlessly walking down identical corridors, on edge as he waits for an attack that doesn’t come.  
  
Roman might be dead. Dean might be dead. He could be walking into a trap.  
  
He does not fucking care.  
  
He has the taste of freedom on his tongue, and he wants more so badly it hurts.  
  
But as they walk, he can’t help but think of all the problems they’ll face once they get out.  
  
For instance, they still don’t know who’s running this shit. If they escape successfully, who’s to say that the people in charge won’t just hunt them down and bring them back? What if it’s government-funded- will they just get sniped so they can’t talk? Where can they go? What about their families? And how the fuck are they going to live in peace when Dean has a bloodthirsty, utterly psychotic endosymbiont in his head?  
  
Shit.

In the end, Seth decides to deal with it later.  
  
After all, they have to get out first.  
  
It seems like forever and a day before they finally arrive at an otherwise-unremarkable door, and Seth turns to the scientist.

“Open it,” he commands.  
  
The scientist’s hands are trembling as he pulls a keycard from his pocket, so much so that he has to press it against the scanner a few times before it goes green.  
  
Instead of opening it, though, Seth turns to the other man. “Where do they take the people they freeze?” he asks.  
  
The other man points. “Three corridors that way,” he croaks.  
  
Seth focuses the countermeasure, turns it onto high and zaps him before he has a chance to run, and he doesn’t even care, not even when the dead scientist’s body lands an inch away from his foot, his eyes bulging.  
  
Instead, he turns back to the door, and cracks his knuckles.  
  
_I always wanted to do this._  
  
He raises a foot and kicks the door hard, and it flies open, hitting the wall with a _bam_.  
  
Seconds later, there’s a _thud_ from below, and before he can react, Seth turns the countermeasure onto medium, knocking out everyone in the room before they have a chance to react.  
  
Seth kicks the door shut and runs over to the railing, kicking a fallen guard out of the way as he reaches it. Far below him, two men lie on the floor of the arena: one is either dead or possesses some kind of superpower that lets him live when his head’s pointing backwards, and the other is Roman. For a second, Seth thinks he’s dead, but… no. No blood, no obvious wounds.  
  
“ _Roman!_ ” he roars.  
  
Below him, Roman twitches.  
  
Seth nearly breaks a leg climbing down the ladder, and he doesn’t care. He’s got more important things to do.  
  
The sight of the dead man and the accompanying stench nearly makes him throw up, but that’s not important right now. Instead, he rushes over to where Roman’s stirring and pulls him up to a sitting position.  
  
OK, maybe he slaps Roman awake just a _little_ harder than necessary. Just a little. It’s not like it matters.  
  
Roman’s eyelids flutter, and Seth bites his lip, listening intently for movement.  
  
He really, really hopes that nobody else wakes up, or they’re dead.

In hindsight, yeah, leaving the weapons with the guards was fucking stupid, but Seth’s never done this before and the countermeasure hasn’t failed him yet. 

…which probably means that he should be prepared for when it _does_ fail him, but now is not the time for needless paranoia.  
  
“Come on,” he urges Roman quietly. “Wake the fuck up already, will you?”  
  
Roman’s eyes open, and he mumbles a single word. “Dean?”  
  
But of course.

“Not even close,” Seth replies.  
  
“Where’s Dean?” Roman asks again, a little clearer this time.  
  
“I don’t exactly know,” Seth admits, because _three blocks sort of left_ isn’t actually that helpful. “We got separated.”  
  
Roman tries to get up, nearly falls and barely manages to catch himself. “You came for me?” 

“I talked to a scientist,” Seth explains. “He said they were going to kill you, so-  
  
“You came for me,” Roman repeats, like he can’t fathom the idea.  
  
“ _Yes,_ ” Seth says, rolling his eyes- how many times is he going to have to repeat himself? “Look, we have to get out of here-”  
  
“You could have left me,” Roman says slowly. “You could have told Dean you didn’t get here in time. Why?”  
  
Seth feels like he’s been slapped again. “I… look. I don’t like you, but fuck, I’m not _that_ bad, Jesus. And we can sort this out like adults.”  
  
Roman looks like he’s considering it, and then he nods. “You’re right. Sorry. We have to go.”  
  
“I already said- oh, _fine_.”  
  
They climb the ladder without delay, and Roman stops at the sight of the unconscious staff.  
  
“Dead?” he asks quietly.  
  
Seth shakes his head, even though Roman’s not facing him. “Unconscious.”  
  
Roman looks around slowly, and then nods decisively. “This is what we do. I’ll grab him-” and he points to a scientist with white hair and glasses- “and you make sure they stay down. Make sure they won’t wake up for a while.”  
  
“Got it,” Seth says.

He’s not sure why he’s taking orders now, but he’ll roll with it. Roman at least seems to have a general idea of what he’s doing, and that’s a damn good place to start.  
  
Roman hoists the old man over his shoulder and carries him out, and it’s not hard for Seth to zap the others again.  
  
It’s a tempting thought, but he doesn’t kill them. He’s got enough blood on his hands already. Even if the fuckers deserve it, given how many people they must have killed in the arena alone.

Before he leaves, he searches a couple of the scientists and takes the keycards from the lanyards around their necks. With the countermeasure, they don’t need weapons, but the keycards might come in handy, even though he has no idea where the exit is, or even how to get through it, or if any of the keycards he now has can do anything remotely helpful.

Still. It’s a chance he’ll take. It’s not like he’ll lose anything by doing it.

He finds Roman outside, heading toward the next door up. It’s locked, but the keycard on the scientist’s lanyard opens it, thankfully.  
  
It’s an office, quite neat but quite bare, and thankfully the owner of this office isn’t in at the moment. Roman drops the man in one of the chairs in front of the desk and starts shaking him awake fairly roughly.  
  
“Why this guy?” Seth asks curiously.  
  
“He’s not… OK, he’s a bad guy, but fuck, he tried to save my life,” Roman says, though he sounds like he doesn’t believe it himself. “I mean, he actually seems to like me. Let me do the talking.”  
  
Seth grunts an agreement and watches as the man slowly awakens.  
  
At first, he’s confused, and then as he realises where he is and who’s in front of him, he seems… happy?  
  
Fuck, he’s actually laughing. What is _wrong_ with him?  
  
“I knew it,” he chuckles to Roman. “I knew you were something special. By God…”  
  
He looks up at them, and they both realise that he’s not looking at Roman any more. He’s looking at Seth.  
  
“Are you going to kill me, Subject Tau?” he asks serenely, still smiling, and it’s one of the creepiest things Seth has ever seen in his life.  
  
“My name is Seth,” Seth says steadily, trying to stop himself from shaking, because there’s twenty different kinds of wrong in here and he doesn’t even know where to start.  
  
“Seth,” the scientist repeats. “Are you going to kill me?”  
  
“No, he isn’t,” Roman cuts in. “And I won’t either, Jean. But we need answers.”  
  
The scientist- Jean- finally stops staring at Seth, turning his beatific gaze on Roman. “How could I not?”

 

Seth has no idea what the fuck is wrong with this guy.  
  
It’s not just that he hasn’t stopped smiling. It’s more that he actually seems happy that everything is collapsing around him.  
  
“Whose idea was this?” Roman asks first.  
  
“Define _this_ ,” Jean replies.  
  
“This whole thing. Whose idea was it?”  
  
Jean names a corporation, and Seth thinks he’s vaguely heard of it, but that’s all. It's not exactly an illuminating answer.

“So the whole thing’s privately-run? Nobody else knows? What about the government?”

“Of course not,” Jean replies, rolling his eyes. “This is one of the most top-secret projects to ever exist! It wouldn’t be top-secret if everyone knew about it, would it?”

“How could they _not?_ ” Seth asks, forgetting that he’d agreed to let Roman do the talking. “You abducted hundreds of people and brought them all here, you really think that people wouldn’t notice?”

Jean shakes his head patiently, like a teacher explaining something simple to a slow student. “We abducted subjects in large numbers from a variety of cities. We picked the cities at random and never returned once we’d got what we needed. After all, it's not like people aren't abducted all the time. And we don’t shit where we eat.”

A chill runs down Seth’s spine at how casually Jean is talking about his _victims_ , but he refrains from saying anything.

After all, it’s not like it’s news that all of these people are severely fucked in the head.

“Where are we?” Roman asks next.  
  
The location Jean names isn’t familiar to Seth, but Roman frowns.

“Montana?” he asks. “We’re in Montana?”  
  
Jean nods.

 _Montana,_ Seth thinks. It’s not a state he’s very familiar with, but it’s a place to start, at least.  
  
“Are you in charge?” Roman asks.  
  
Jean scoffs. “Me? Lord, no! No, Andi’s in charge here. But she doesn’t watch the tests, you won’t find her around here.”  
  
Roman and Seth exchange a glance, but say nothing.  
  
“You’re trying to make a one-man army,” Roman says. “Aren’t you?”  
  
“Something like that,” Jean admits. “Though part of it was developing our knowledge of the amazing powers we gave to you subjects.”  
  
“How far did you get?” Roman asks.  
  
“Not very,” Jean says regretfully. “Subject Xi is still the best we’ve got. Psi is- was- good, but not quite as such. A pity, because the endosymbiont we placed in Xi is proving quite the bitch to reproduce, sadly. If we had more time, I imagine we could create the perfect subject, but I suppose it’s all over, since you two have escaped…” and he sighs.  
  
“How’d you get into this?” Roman asks next.  
  
Jean thinks for a second. “Well, I suppose I’ve always been something of a mad scientist,” he admits. “Not that I ever broke the rules in my time. But I’ve always had a mad hankering to answer the questions that nobody else would. And in this day and age, those questions are the ones we’re not allowed to, because of ethics and rules and the like. I mean, of course the rules are there for a reason, but I always wondered how much we might be missing out on because of those rules. So when Andi and the others approached me, I agreed to work with them on the condition that they would let me conduct my own experiments, so I could try answering some of the more… _interesting_ questions.”  
  
_Holy fuck,_ Seth thinks, horrified.

He’s never been much of a science geek, but hearing Jean’s answer is making him think of some of the reasons _why_ those questions go unanswered: Unit 731, the Tuskegee experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment…  
  
“Did you answer a lot of questions?” Roman asks, his face unreadable.  
  
“Quite a few,” Jean admits. “We’ve had plenty of time to work on them, after all.”  
  
“How _much_ time?” Roman asks, his voice steady. “How long has this been going on?”  
  
Jean screws up his face pensively. “Oh… sixteen months? Give or take a few weeks?”  
  
_Sixteen months_. The thought makes Seth’s head swim.  
  
How many _people_ got dragged into this? How many died? How many… God. Sixteen _months._  
  
“And you didn’t care?” Roman asks bluntly. “You never cared that all these people were _dying_ so you could ‘answer the questions nobody else would’?”  
  
“My dear lad,” Jean says levelly, “do you really think I would have allowed myself to come this far if I _did_ care?”  
  
He’s a fucking monster. He’s inhuman, insane, evil-  
  
Roman closes his eyes, clenches his fists, and asks the most important. “Where is Subject Xi?”  
  
Jean shrugs. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you the exact location, but he should be a few blocks that way.” He points. “You’re looking for the main hospital wing. Of course, it won’t be an easy search. I imagine the entire team will be out to subdue you. That being said, I don’t think Xi will succumb easily. That endosymbiont is more powerful than I think we ever imagined.”  
  
_And they’ll all be waiting for us,_ Seth thinks.  
  
“So now what?” Jean asks, and he smiles again.  
  
Roman looks at Seth, and Seth’s got an idea.  
  
“You’ve got access to the systems, right?” he asks. “Like, the records, the surveillance and so on.”  
  
Jean nods. “One of the highest in the building.”  
  
“Do you need to be in a certain place to access them?” Seth asks.  
  
Jean shakes his head. 

“So you could access them from that computer?” Seth asks.

“Yes.”  
  
“Turn off the cameras,” Seth says. “Open all the cell doors. Set the subjects free. And make sure all your research, all your findings, all of it gets out. Send it to other scientists, journals, I don’t care. You killed and tortured all those people for those findings, not so it could all end up wasted when we burn this place down.”  
  
Jean smiles, and there’s a hint of approval in his expression that makes Seth’s skin crawl. “Of course, Sub- Seth. But I can only operate things here,” he says. “Not in the other division.”  
  
Roman frowns. “What other-”  
  
The lights turn green.  
  
“ _Attention! Attention! Subjects Xi, Zeta and Tau have escaped! All units, subdue them immediately! All-”_  
  
The voice cuts off with a scream, and Seth and Roman look at each other. 

“Oh, shit,” Roman says quietly.

“Took them long enough to notice,” Seth mutters.  
  
“ _I’m baaaaaack,”_ a singsong voice says, and Seth is both happy and terrified at once, because it’s Dean’s voice and he sounds completely out of his goddamn mind. “ _And I’m gonna shank every last one of you fuckers_. _”_

What’s arguably worse is that he can tell that it’s not the beast speaking, which just begs the question, _what the fuck is going on?_  
  
Seth stares at Jean. “Where is he broadcasting from?”  
  
Jean looks helpless, even under the green light. “Anywhere! Any of our phones can broadcast-”  
  
“Is there a way to contact the phone he’s using?” Roman asks, getting the idea.  
  
Jean pulls out a phone, squinting, and starts pressing buttons. “I can call him and shut off the chat function that phone was using, give me a second...”  
  
“ _Fuckers thought you could hold me, didn’t you?”_ Dean asks, and there’s another scream that makes Seth cringe as he imagines what could have caused it. _“Thought you could tie me down and make me your bitch-”_  
  
There's a little blip as the sound cuts out, replaced with silence. Seth grabs the phone out of Jean’s hand and puts it on speaker, and a second later, the ring tone is replaced by the sound of heavy breathing.

Roman jumps in first. “Dean!”

“ _Roman,_ ” Dean says nonchalantly. “ _Nice to hear you.”_

“Dean, where are you?” Seth asks desperately. “We’re OK, we’ll come find you-”  
  
_“I ain’t got a fuckin’ clue where I am,”_ Dean replies. “ _And I got a shitload of people who wanna kill me, so you might want to move fast-”_  
  
The phone goes dead.  
  
Seth looks at Roman, hoping to God that he’ll have an idea. “What now?”

“Can you get the lights back to normal?” Roman asks Jean.  
  
“I can try,” Jean says.  
  
Without waiting, he goes to the computer and starts typing, and Roman steps behind him and lays a hand on the back of the chair in a way that's about as subtle as a brick to the head.  
  
“Oh, really,” Jean snaps. “Must you be so _obvious?_ ”  
  
“Yes,” Roman says flatly.  
  
Jean scoffs, but he doesn’t complain. Like he has any right to.  
  
The atmosphere becomes tense as Jean types away, the sound of the keys the only thing Seth can hear. He grips the edge of the desk so hard his knuckles turn white, trying not to think about what the fuck’s going on with Dean-

-and the lights turn back to normal.  
  
Jean looks up at Roman. “Now what?”  
  
“Do as he said,” Roman says. “Open the doors. Make sure your research gets out. Keep the cameras off and the lights normal. Understand?”  
  
Jean nods and starts typing. “And then what?”

“I don’t even fucking care,” Roman snaps, and he turns to Seth. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. We’re done.”  
  
They’re almost out the door when Jean speaks again, and they turn back.  
  
“Done,” he says. “The cameras are off, and they should stay off. The lights should remain normal. The doors are unlocked, and I’ll work on the research forthwith. Subject Zeta-”  
  
“Roman,” Roman snaps.  
  
“Roman,” Jean continues. “Good luck.”  
  
Roman doesn’t respond. Instead, he turns and walks out the door, nearly dragging Seth with him.

  
  
  
Dean Ambrose is very confused.  
  
He’s hovering on the verge of awake, and he’s not quite sure how to think any more.  
  
On the one hand, he’s vaguely aware that there might be people nearby. On the other hand, he’s not sure he remembers how to brain.  
  
He thinks this might be a problem, but he can’t feel his mind.  
  
So instead, he relaxes, and lets himself slide into darkness.

 

  
_When he opens his eyes, he finds himself sitting on the floor in the centre of a red room that’s the size of a house.  
_

_The walls are smooth and light red, the floors dark red tiles. Doors are set in the walls at equal intervals, all painted a red so dark it’s nearly black._

_A single light is embedded in the ceiling, and somehow, despite how small it is, it lights up the whole room perfectly.  
_  
_Dean looks down at himself, confused. He’s wearing a plain black shirt and jeans, no shoes, and he seems to be clean, unharmed, and in his right mind._

_This is a fucking weird dream. Lucid dreaming, he thinks it’s called. He’s never had one, he knows that-_

_“Because this is not a dream, Dean.”_

_Dean looks up, bites back a curse and tries not to flinch away as a_ monster _walks into the room. He has no idea how the fuck it got through any of the doors, and he_ knows _it wasn’t there before._

_The monster surveys him peacefully as he stares at it._

_He can’t make out the details. It’s not that he can’t see. Instead, the monster’s features change by the second: one instant it has four huge legs, each with pebbly skin and huge claws; the next, it has two legs with smooth skin and no claws in sight. It has huge leathery wings like a bat’s- but wait, no it doesn’t. It has six eyes, then two, then four; it has thick black fur, then smooth black hide._

_About the only consistent part of its anatomy is that it’s_ sort of _the same shape as a major predator: it walks on all its limbs, it has a head, a neck and a body supported by said limbs. Its fur/hide/skin is black, and it has eyes, a nose, a mouth and ears. But nothing is concrete._  
  
_“You’re the beast,” Dean says, finally getting it._

 _“I am,” the beast confirms. It sinks down onto its- two? six? four?- limbs, like a dog told to lie down._  
  
_“What’s with the changing?” Dean asks. He’s having trouble looking directly at it- the constant alterations are making his eyes water. “Oh, wait, don’t tell me- my mind can’t comprehend it, so you’re in a form I’m comfortable with.”_  
  
_“Not exactly,” the beast says. “You envision me as a monster. I envision me as a monster. But neither of us knows what my true form looks like, so all we have to go on is ‘monster’- and that describes so many things.”_

_“So you’re changing between monster forms,” Dean says slowly._

_“I am,” the beast says again. “We need to talk, Dean.”_

_“What about? And where the fuck are we?”_

_“We are in your mind,” the beast replies. “Or at least, your mind as I comprehend it.”_

_“So what’s through the doors?” Dean asks._

_“I do not know. I surmise that as this is_ your _mind, it would be extremely different for you. I perceive what lies beyond as endless corridors, and this is the center. You, on the other hand… but there is no time for that. As we speak, our captors are preparing to keep you in a coma until they can successfully subdue our friends- by which I mean that they intend to kill Roman and alter Seth’s mind so drastically that he will not even recognise you. We_ must _escape. But right now is-”_

_“Whoa, whoa, wait a second,” Dean says, trying to keep up. “How do you know this?”_

_“There is a significant difference between what your body hears and what_ you _hear. I am always listening, except when Seth knocks me out. So I hear what they say around us, when they think you cannot hear them."_

_Dean doesn’t reply, because he’s just caught up to the key part of what the beast said: they want to rewire Seth’s mind._

_“Dean?”_

_“I’m gonna_ kill _them,” Dean snarls lividly._  
  
_“Agreed, but we don’t have time for that-”_

_“How do I get out of here?” Dean asks, ignoring the last part as he gets to his feet._

_“_ Stop _,” the beast says so firmly that Dean pauses. After a second, he sits back down._

_“Once you wake up, you will have all the time in the world to kill,” the beast says, licking its lips at the last word. ‘But for now, we must plan.”_

_“Plan_ what? _” Dean asks, annoyed. “We wake up, we kill everything and get out. The end.”_

_“And then what?”_

_Dean pauses._

_“What happens if we successfully escape? Do you really think we can survive when thanks to our captors, you now experience powerful homicidal urges? How will we ensure that we are not followed and brought back here? What happens if Seth or Roman- or both of them- die?”_  
  
_Dean freezes._

_“And even if we all survive, what next? Where do we go? What about their families? Given that Seth and Roman despise each other, how will you get them to work together- especially since you seem to be attracted to them both? How-”_

_“I get it,” Dean whispers. “I fucking get it.”_

_“Do you?” the beast asks quietly._

_Dean doesn’t respond, because to be honest, he has no fucking idea._

_Like that’s new._

_“What about you?” he asks finally. “If we make it out of here, what, you’re just gonna make me kill people?”_

_“I_ make _you do nothing,” the beast says irritably. “And if we escape, I will do my best to curb the effects of my base desires. I do not think I would enjoy prison. And_ you _are avoiding the questions. If you have any ideas, then this would be the time to put them forward,” the beast says. “I do not know how much time we have left.”_

_“Until what?” Dean asks._

_“Until it becomes necessary for you to wake up.”_

_Dean nods curtly and starts thinking._

_A few minutes later, he looks up at the beast. “I know this sounds like a cop-out, but…”_

_“But?”_

_“But, I don’t think I can answer most of those questions,” Dean admits. No harm in honesty. “I mean, right now I’m unconscious and these fuckers have me locked up. If we can get out of here,_ then _we can start making plans. I don’t know where we are, do you? I mean, where this whole clusterfuck is?”_  
  
_The beast sighs. “I do not, no.”_

 _“_ If _we get out of here, and_ if _Seth and Roman get out as well, and_ if _none of us get injured or anything,_ then _we can start making plans.”_

_The beast sounds annoyed, and honestly, Dean can’t blame it. “You are aware that making things up as you go along will not suffice in a tense situation, aren’t you?"_

_“I know.” Dean groans. “But what the fuck else am I going to do? Do you want me to start making plans that’ll get thrown out once we escape and find out that nothing is what we thought it was?”_

_The beast pauses. “I… all right. You have a point.”_

_“Besides, I’m not the one who makes the plans,” Dean argues. “Roman is. If we make it out, I guarantee you, he_ will _have a plan.”_  
  
_“And if he is dead?”_

_The thought makes Dean’s blood run cold, but he stands firm. “Then I’ll think of something.”_

_The beast looks disapproving, inasmuch as anything with a constantly-changing face can look disapproving. “You would do better to think of_ some _kind of plan-”_

 _“I’m trying to stay alive,” Dean snaps back._  
  
_The beast changes tack. “So what about Seth and Roman? How do you intend to hold the three of you together when they are fighting over you?”_

_“God, do you have to say it like we’re dumbshit kids?” Dean asks, rolling his eyes._

_“Are you not? In this situation, anyway,” the beast amends._  
  
_Dean sighs. “I… you…_ fuck. _Why do you care, anyway?”_

_“I only care because this insipid triangle may end up harming us all. If the three of you cannot co-operate, then things may take a turn for the worse.”_

_“So what are you saying?” Dean asks defiantly._

_“What is the… ah, yes. Sort your shit out. Immediately.”_

_“That’s not actually helpful,” Dean snaps back._  
  
_“I am not the one courting two men at once. That would be_ you _. So_ you _need to sort it out, or there may well be blood.”_

_“Got any more advice for me?” Dean snarls._

_“Yes. If you- oh, no…”_

_“What?” Dean asks, looking around._

_“You have to wake up,” the beast says quietly. “Around…_ now _.”_

 _Dean opens his mouth to respond, but the beast rises, steps forward and-_  
  
 

  
Dean wakes up.  
  
The world is an explosion of colour and noise, and he can’t seem to focus when nothing makes sense.  
  
When he opens his eyes just a little, smears of colour catch on the edge of his vision, undulating and blending to create colours he’s never seen before. Sounds go from explosively loud to whisperingly soft in under a second, and he winces away from them.  
  
His right hand is touching something, something cold, but the texture changes from smooth to rough and back again.  
  
The entire combined effect makes him want to curl up and hide until it all stops, but when he tries to, something around his wrist stops him.  
  
_The drugs will wear off shortly,_ a voice in his head whispers reassuringly. _You will be fine, Dean._  
  
The voice. Yes. He has to trust the voice.  
  
_“This is fucking freaky. Do we_ have _to?”_

_“Look, it’ll be done in a few minutes. We just get Xi to his new room, inject him and that’s it.”_

That… doesn’t sound good.  
  
_Stay calm,_ the voice in his head says. _Just wait._  
  
There’s a slight _thud_ , and he’s jarred, the collision knocking him slightly to the side.

_“Careful!”_

_“Shit, sorry.”_

_“Don’t corner so hard! Do you_ want _Xi to wake up?”_  
  
_Fools_ , the voice whispers.  
  
_“I said I was sorry!”_

 _“Take the next left, then a right… oh, wait. Pull over.”_  
  
Dean lurches slightly as the gurney grinds to a halt. A hand grabs his wrist roughly, and it’s all he can do to not pull away.  
  
_“Doc Kayan says we have to inject Xi with this before we bring him in. Something about saving time, making life a bit easier for the docs.”_

_“What do I need to do?”_

_“Just keep an eye on Xi. If he starts to wake up, then tell me, OK?”_  
  
_And that would be our cue,_ the voice says. _Dean, open your eyes._  
  
Dean tries to shake his head, but his head feels like solid lead, refusing to respond to his command.  
  
He doesn’t want to see the colours again, doesn’t want that chaos anywhere near him. The thought makes his stomach churn.  
  
He clenches his eyes shut, and the voice speaks again.  
  
_All I need is one second. Dean,_ open your eyes _. Please._  
  
There’s a sharp sting in his wrist, and the voice sighs. _I suppose I shall just have to do it myself. Again._  
  
Dean’s world vanishes.

 

 

 _The beast opens Dean’s eyes and smiles._

_Both of its/Dean’s wrists are handcuffed to the gurney’s rails, but that’s no impediment. It sits up and pulls its arms free, tearing the handcuffs free of the rails. As the shouts of alarm from the two orderlies register, it grins, Dean’s eyes a livid red._

_One scrambles backwards, eyes wide with horror. The other attempts to grab the syringe in Dean’s wrist so it can inject the strange grey substance within._

_The beast pulls the syringe free, ignoring the pain as the needle emerges. It grabs the orderly’s free hand and bends it back so hard the wrist snaps like a twig. The_ crack _echoes through the corridor, through Dean’s body, and the beast smiles._

_This may well be the last time it gets to truly enjoy itself._

_So it may as well have_ fun _, then._

_It brings the syringe down into the orderly’s wrist and injects the substance swiftly. It doesn’t know what’s in the syringe, nor does it care._

_The orderly does, though, because in seconds, he’s screaming in agony, his body contorting until he falls to the ground, helpless._  
  
_The beast turns its gaze on the other orderly, the one frozen in fear. Ah,_ yes _. This is its prey. This is who it was born to kill._

 _It pulls the handcuffs from its wrists, ignoring the wounds they cause. It tosses the useless metal aside and climbs off the gurney, still smiling._  
  
_Movement catches its eye: the first orderly, the one screaming and writhing as the substance in the syringe affects it._  
  
_The beast sighs. As much as it would like to stay and embrace this prey’s pain, it simply doesn’t have time. So it places a foot on the orderly’s neck and steps down_ hard _, and that’s the end of that._  
  
_That leaves the other one._

_The beast likes to think of itself as something of an artist. It’s seen art in Dean’s memories- it’s seen a lot of things in Dean’s memories, in fact. When it’s not analysing the things Dean sees and hears, taking control or being knocked out, it explores Dean’s mind and the strange world around it._

_And there is_ so _much to work with in the human body._

 _True, blood does have the bad habit of oxidising quickly once exposed to air, but there’s_ plenty _for it to work with in an adult human._

_By the time it is done, the corridor has been transformed. A stretch of wall now hosts a variety of patterns and designs- spirals, curved lines, sharp angles, all painted in blood. Bone splinters impale shreds of various organs to the wall in carefully-chosen places, and the ruined corpse lies underneath it all, a palette cast aside now that the painting is done._

_The beast looks at its finished work and smiles._

_Of course, it’s all unnecessary- but then again,_ art _is unnecessary. Humans require food, sleep, shelter, water and not much else. The beast requires blood and death- and not much else. To both, art is a luxury, not a necessity. And to both, art is symbolic, a sign that they have risen above their primitive base forms._

 _There’s no rule that says that art can’t be made from corpses, after all. The beast is nothing if not cultured._  
  
_It turns, and smiles. It has an audience now._

_Around a dozen guards are clustered on the other side of the corridor. Even through their armour and helmets, the beast knows they’re afraid. Fear is like a magnet, drawing its attention, and now it can hardly look away._

_It also knows the impression it’s making on them: its/Dean’s body is naked and covered in blood, and it/he is grinning._

_So it does the only logical thing to do: it bows._

_“What do you think?” it asks the guards. “Truly a masterpiece, no?”_

_From the noise, it’s fairly certain that one of the guards just threw up in its helmet._

_Not that it has to worry about that, because the beast takes the opportunity to attack._

_Once it’s done, it looks down at the corpses at its feet, and frowns._

_Surely,_ surely _there must be_ something _it can do with them._

_And as it turns out, there is._

_The beast is almost happy as it strolls down the corridor. The feeling of blood on its/Dean’s skin is one it relishes, and the stench of dead flesh is one it adores._

_It’s enjoying itself so much, in fact, that it doesn’t even notice that people are trying to shoot it until the first bullet goes through its/Dean’s leg._

_It looks down at the slowly-closing hole in its/Dean’s leg, then up at its would-be shooter, and it sighs._

_“Do you have to shoot everything?” it asks derisively. “I mean,_ really. _”_

_Instead of waiting for an answer, it strikes first._

_With these attackers attended to, the beast continues onward. It does not know where it is going, nor does it know if it is even heading in the right direction. But at least now it can attempt to satisfy itself one last time._

 

 

“Eric? Eric! We’ve got a fucking situation here!” Michi gasps as she rounds the corner, nearly crashing into him in the process. “Sorry, Eric, but-” 

“But what?” he asks, helping her up.

“Where’s Andi?” Michi asks desperately. “Tau! Tau’s escaped! He’s going after Zeta!”

Eric pauses. “Please tell me you didn’t just say that Tau has escaped.”

Michi nods, her eyes wide. “And he’s, he’s gone after Zeta! I left my phone behind, have you got yours?”  
  
Eric grabs his phone and starts to dial, but before he can, the loudspeaker crackles.

 _“Attention, all main staff. An emergency has occurred. Code Six. This is not a drill. I repeat, Code Six, ASAP.”_  
  
“Oh no,” Michi whispers, and that’s the fatalist speaking. “Oh no, oh _no_ …”

“Calm down,” Eric says soothingly as he dials buttons. “It’s going to be OK.”

And it will be. They’ve subdued all rogue subjects in the past, they’ll do it again just fine.

Code Six means it’s time for a major conference call, and once he’s finished dialling, he puts the phone on speaker and waits.  
  
After a few seconds, there’s a _click_. “Andi here.” She sounds crisp, attentive, and not at all fazed, as per usual.  
  
“Eric and Michi,” Eric says, giving Michi a soothing smile as he mentally rolls his eyes. As much as he likes her, she’s so highly-strung it’s just annoying. How Andi puts up with her… but then again, Andi always does, that’s why she’s the leader.  
  
“Copy that. Stand by,” Andi orders.  
  
Despite the tense situation, Eric manages to roll his eyes- for the love of God, this isn’t the army, who does she _think_ she is?- but before long, Andi’s back.  
  
“People, this is the situation: Subject Tau has escaped custody. He’s taken Mikael hostage and killed a number of guards, along with several of our colleagues. He’s headed toward… shit. He’s headed toward the arena.”

Eric mutters a curse, and Michi grabs his hand so tightly he has to prise her fingers off before his hand goes numb.  
  
“Send more guards,” Paolo suggests. He would. Paolo always liked the ‘overwhelming numbers’ tactic, even when it obviously never worked.

“Like that’ll work,” Olivia snaps, as blunt and intolerant of fools as ever. “Tau’s too good, he’ll just wipe them out. Deploy the gas already, why are we-”

“We don’t _have_ the gas in the main corridors,” Eric says, rolling his eyes again. As much as he likes Olivia’s bluntness, he doesn’t like her inability to remember the important details. “It’s in the main rooms, but not in the corridors. Budget wouldn’t cover it.”

 “I swear to God, if we all get killed because of the fucking _budget…”_

“We don’t have time for this!” Andi snarls. “If anyone has a _good_ idea, now would be the time to say it!”  
  
Eric ignores the conversation in favour of trying to calm Michi down. Of all the people to get saddled with, he had to get stuck with the highly-strung paranoid fatalist…  
  
God damn it.  
  
In the end, he slides an arm around her shoulders and urges her onward, trying to figure out the safest place to hide as they walk. There’s no real need to move- it’s not like they’re in any danger, after all. He’s just hoping that it’ll be a distraction for her.  
  
“We got more problems,” Andi says. “Tau just rescued Zeta. They’re taking Jean somewhere.”

“Call a lockdown!”

 “Jean? What the hell do they want with _Jean?”_

“How would I know?” Andi asks back, exasperated. “It looks like Tau just killed everyone in the arena except Zeta, and Zeta killed Psi-”

“ _Psi?_ Zeta killed _Psi?”_  
  
“Oh my God, Max was in there! And so was Ash!”  
  
“Shit,” Eric whispers, his head spinning at the news.  
  
Everything is suddenly seeming very, very real. 

They need to get the hell out of here. 

He urges Michi on, trying to listen and think of the closest safe place.  
  
“Tau’s got keycards,” Andi reports. “I can’t tell whose, the cameras in the arena went out a while ago.”

“Max is dead?” Michi gasps. “I… I was going to have lunch with him…”  
  
“Not the time,” Eric mutters, nearly dragging her around a corner.  
  
“Andi, can you take out the keycards?”

“No can do, Sal. I don’t know whose keycards Tau snagged, so all I can do is take out all of them- and that just fucks us all.”

The conversation continues, but Eric’s not listening. Instead, he’s becoming painfully aware that the corridors are oddly empty.

“Where _is_ everyone?” he asks.

“I’ve deployed guards to- oh, _shit_ ,” Andi says. “Xi is loose! I repeat, Xi is loose!”  
  
Eric’s blood runs cold.  
  
He can hear Andi calling for the lockdown, but before she can finish, Michi _screams_ , and Eric manages to ignore the fact that his eardrums have nearly burst, because Xi is standing right in front of them- where the fuck did he even _come from?_ \- and he’s covered in blood.  
  
And for once in his life, Eric has no idea what to do.

Calmly, he lifts the phone to his mouth, and maybe it’s the suddenness of it all, or maybe he just doesn’t have any room for fear right now, but he manages to remain calm as he speaks.

 “Xi is here,” he says quietly. “I repeat, Xi is here. We’re currently alone. Unless help arrives in the next ten seconds…” 

He trails off, and sighs. “It’s been good working with you all.”

“Eric? _Eric?”_

 

  
_The beast frowns. He_ knows _this man. Not the terrified woman behind him, but she’s irrelevant, frozen with fear as she is._

_So instead of wasting time on trying to find out who this man is, it hands control back to Dean._

  
  
  
Dean wakes, feeling like someone injected espresso into his veins. He’s never felt so awake in his life, and he wants to run, wants to fight, wants to do anything other than standing still.  
  
He sucks in deep breaths, ignoring the smell of blood, and he stares into the eyes of a man he swore to kill.  
  
And he laughs, because _holy fuck it was all so simple._

In the end, all he had to do was let go.

He’s high on adrenaline and loving every second of it, and now there’s no turning back.

“I’m baaaaaaack,” he says happily, not just for the two in front of him, but also for anyone listening over the phone he can see in the man’s hand. “And I’m gonna shank every last one of you fuckers.” 

He lowers his voice. “I remember you. You’re the douchebag from the arena.”  
  
No response. Fucknuckle stares back at him, showing no emotion whatsoever, like he knows he’s about to die and doesn’t care.  
  
“Fuckers thought you could hold me, didn’t you?” Dean asks, and instead of waiting for a response, he lunges forward, but doesn’t actually attack, grinning at the scream it elicits from the other one, the one behind Fucknuckle. “Thought you could tie me down and make me your bitch-”  
  
The phone starts ringing, and Dean pauses. He turns around, and sighs. Screws have blocked off the end of the corridor.

When he turns back around, there are more screws at the other end, and both groups are moving forward slowly.

Despite that, he shrugs. “Wonder who that is.”

He holds up a hand to both sets of enemies, pulls the phone out of Fucknuckle’s hand and hits the answer button. 

The voice that comes out of the other end is a most welcome one.

“ _Dean!”_

“Roman,” Dean says happily. “Nice to hear you.”

 _“Dean, where are you?”_ Seth asks, and Dean spares a second to wonder what they’re doing together. “We’re OK, we’ll come find you-”

“I ain’t got a fuckin’ clue where I am,” Dean drawls, trying to sound nonchalant as the screws approach. “And I got a shitload of people who wanna kill me, so you might want to move fast-”

One of the screws fires. The bullet goes through the phone, Dean’s hand, and narrowly misses Fucknuckle, who belatedly hits the floor.

Dean looks down at the hole in his hand, then at the busted phone, and sighs. “Hey, I was talking, bitch.”  
  
Despite the banter, he knows what he has to do. They’re not there to play nice.  
  
So he lets the beast back in.

  
  
  
_The beast smiles._

_It’s like Christmas (that’s the term, right?), with all these victims just standing there, waiting for their deaths._

_And the beast is nothing but obliging._  
  
  
  
  
If there’s one thing that Roman never wants to do again, it’s following the trail of destruction Dean leaves behind him.  
  
The first few corridors are empty, and it’s like being in _Silent Hill_ or something: there’s no sound except their footsteps, no one’s in sight, and they’re just waiting for the lights to go off or for something to jump out at them. The pain in his body has lessened to the occasional throb, and yeah, it’s bad, but it could be worse.  
  
Well, until they round the corner and come face to face with what’s worse: one of the most sickening sights they’ve ever seen.  
  
Seth takes one look and starts throwing up, and Roman really can’t blame him. Just the sight of… _it_ … is making him feel a little faint.  
  
The worst part, he thinks distantly, is that it would probably be quite a pretty sight if it wasn’t made from blood and flesh. The shapes and patterns are clearly defined, and the corpses have been neatly placed to accentuate certain aspects of the piece.  
  
That doesn’t change the fact that he feels like he’s just walked into a _Saw_ movie.  
  
He forces himself to take a few steps forward until he can see the trail of bloody footsteps leading to the right. Once he’s found them, he goes back, grabs Seth’s arm and practically drags him past the monstrosity.  
  
Once they’re safely around another corner, he voices his thoughts. “I think we both forgot something.”  
  
Seth doesn’t respond, and Roman really can’t blame him. This is the same guy they’re totally-not-fighting over, after all.  
  
“You OK?” Roman asks gruffly.  
  
Seth’s voice is so quiet that for a second, Roman thinks he imagined it. “What did we forget?”  
  
“That the beast may be on our side, but that doesn’t mean it’s _nice_ ,” Roman replies.  
  
“I don’t think I can forget that now,” Seth whispers, his eyes hollow.  
  
They keep walking.

  
  
  
The footsteps lead them to more bodies: a literal pile of guards, topped by two scientists, one who Roman vaguely recognises. Above them are the words _Nobody’s slave,_ painted in blood.  
  
“Somehow, I think he made his point,” Roman says as they take in the sight.  
  
They keep walking.

  
  
  
The last sight they come across is arguably worse: the footsteps lead them to a conference room, and Seth slumps against the wall. “I’m not going in there.”  
  
Roman can’t blame him. Instead, he bites the bullet and steps inside.  
  
A minute later, he emerges from the conference room and takes a deep breath.  
  
“How bad?” Seth asks.  
  
“Bad,” Roman replies curtly. “I think they were the ones in charge.”  
  
“I don’t want the details,” Seth says, holding up a hand, and that’s good, because Roman never, ever wants to so much as think about what he saw in that room again. “We need to find Dean.”  
  
It’s probably a bad idea, but Roman asks it anyway. “Should we?”  
  
Seth freezes, incredulous. “ _What?”_  
  
“After everything,” Roman says, “do you really think we should? Do you want to risk letting _that_ out?”  
  
He knows his answer. He wants to know Seth’s.

Seth takes a breath, considers the question for a moment, and nods. “That’s not him. That wasn’t Dean. We can _deal_ with the beast. _I_ can handle the beast. After everything, I’m not going to leave him behind. No fucking way. And if you want to-”  
  
Roman holds a hand up as Seth steps closer, his fists clenched. “I’m not leaving him. I just wanted to see-”

“If I’d turn my back on him?” Seth snarls. “If I’d just walk out on him? No! _Fuck_ no! No way in hell.”  
  
“I hear you,” Roman says. “But if we get out of here, we’re going to have to-”

“I _know_ ,” Seth hisses. “I fucking _know_. But I’m not leaving him here.”

Roman nods. “Then we’re good.”

Seth’s eyes narrow. “This was a test? So how do I know you’re not gonna walk out, huh?” 

It’s a fair point. “You don’t,” Roman admits. “But if we’re going to get out of here, we need to trust each other. And I’m being sincere when I tell you, I’m not going to ditch him. We can work this shit out later. All of it. But right now, we need to find him.”

Seth stares at him intently for a few seconds, and Roman’s almost worried by the time he finally nods.

“Good,” Roman says, relieved that they’ve reached some kind of understanding. “Let’s go.”

They keep walking.

 

  
On the plus side, at least they don’t find any more bodies.  
  
On the minus side, after a while, the footprints fade before vanishing completely, and while right now there’s only one direction they _can_ go, it doesn’t bode well if they end up at a fork.  
  
“We’ll deal with that when we have to,” Roman says when Seth brings it up.

They keep walking.

 

  
It’s not long before they come across something interesting. “Can you see that?” 

“Steam,” Seth says after a second.  
  
Ahead of them, a door hangs open, steam wafting from inside. Seth looks at Roman, who shrugs, and they move inside cautiously.  
  
The room’s empty. It’s like a dormitory, full of bunk beds and lockers, most left in various states of disarray.

“A barracks,” Roman muses. “For the guards, maybe.”

He pauses by the open cupboard by the door: it’s full of vacuum-packed sets of clothes. One pack’s been torn open, the blood-spattered packaging discarded.

Seth leans into the bathroom, blinking through the steamy air. “He _was_ here. There’s… shit, there’s blood on the _walls_.”

Roman winces.  
  
“He must be pretty close,” Seth says. “I bet if we go now-”  
  
“Don’t talk about it, do it,” Roman replies impatiently.

They head out at a run.

  
 

Dean Ambrose has officially crashed.

He’s not quite sure where he is, nor does he care. He’s huddled in a corner by a door, trying not to think, trembling uncontrollably.  
  
He’s not sure which is worse: the fact that he can’t remember what happened after they gassed him, or the fact that the beast is refusing to tell him what happened or why he can't remember.  
  
_It would only hurt you further, Dean._  
  
“Fuck you,” Dean mutters without looking up.  
  
He wants to die. He wants to live. He wants to find Roman and Seth. He wants to stay put.  
  
He has no idea what he wants.  
  
So he closes his eyes and prays that everyone leaves him alone.

 

  
Instinct makes Seth stop just before he rounds a corner, and he freezes as the sound of footsteps reaches his ears.

There’s lots of them. Too many to be Dean, meaning it has to be an enemy. Well, lots of enemies.

“This way!” someone shouts urgently.

Cautiously, Seth leans around the corner, just enough to see the squad of guards racing down the corridor away from them.

Roman follows suit, and he mutters a curse at the sight.

“Wait,” Seth says, an idea hitting him. “They’re not going back that way. So if they know where they’re going…”  
  
“Then they could take us to Dean,” Roman completes, nodding along.

They exchange another glance, and set off at a fast walk.

In the end, they don’t have to go far. It’s like a bizarre children’s game: they keep well behind the guards, darting from corridor to corridor, taking care to never be seen until the squad draws to a halt at a T-intersection. They all draw their weapons, pointing them down the left-hand corridor.

“Subject Xi,” one intones, “surrender now. Put your hands in the air and do not resist.” 

Seth sounds like he can’t believe these idiots. “What… they’re asking _Dean_ to surrender peacefully?”

Roman, on the other hand, is now worried, because if they’re asking Dean to surrender peacefully, then either they’re suicidally stupid or he’s in a state where he can’t instantly attack.

He can only hope it’s the former. 

“Take them down,” he hisses.

Seth nods, closes his eyes, and the lights flicker. The guards hit the floor a second later, and Roman shudders. The buzz he hears/feels is never going to stop feeling weird. Never. 

But there’s no time for that now. Instead, he rounds the corner, jumping over the fallen guards- dead? Unconscious? Does he care? Should he care? Ah, no point- to get to-

“Dean? Are you OK?”

 

 

Dean officially does not have any more fucks to give.

To be fair, he’s not sure he had any in the first place.

But when the guards appear, he’s ready to just give up. He’s done. He’s finished with the whole thing. They can kill him, lobotomise him, whatever- he doesn’t care.

At least, he doesn’t until something knocks out the guards.

For a second, it feels like his head’s full of static, and then it’s replaced by a faint ringing in his ears as the guards fall like bowling pins.

“Dean? Are you OK?” someone asks, and he sighs with relief, because he _knows_ that voice. It’s Roman, and Dean can’t decide if he’s happy or scared now, because he still doesn’t know what the beast did, but they might, and if they do, then they’ll probably never want to see him again. He scrubbed himself until his skin was nearly as red as the blood in the water, but he still feels absolutely filthy.

He just wants this to be over. He wants to go to sleep and never wake up. He wants to hide and never be found.

But that’s not an option, unfortunately.

He hears the slight thud as someone kneels? sits? in front of him, and Roman speaks. “Can you hear me? Are you OK?”

“I don’t even know,” Dean mumbles, not caring that he’s pretty damn incoherent.

“Holy fuck, Dean, what happened?” Seth blurts out, and Dean can’t, won’t look up. He doesn’t want to see them. He knows they’re going to hate him.

“I don’t… I don’t know,” Dean says.

“You don’t?” Roman asks intently.

“I don’t remember,” Dean admits, and he finally looks up into Roman's relieved face. Part of him wonders why Roman is relieved, but he's too drained to be able to really consider it. “I don’t remember anything. But there’s something…” and he trails off, unsure.

The ringing is really loud now, and he shakes his head, trying to knock the sound out of his head.

“What?” Roman asks, looking blank.  
  
_Get down,_ the beast whispers.  
  
“Get down!” Dean roars as loudly as he can, throwing himself sideways. Seth and Roman follow suit a second later, and the world turns upside down.

The world is full of noise and dust and chaos, and Dean curls up in a ball, his arms over his head as the sound bounces around his mind, getting louder and louder until all he can do is scream and scream and scream and-

  _Enough._

Like a light switch being flipped, the sound shuts off, and Dean sags, his energy gone.

“Holy fuck,” someone says, and it takes Dean a while to realise that it’s Roman.

Hands pull Dean up so he’s sitting, his back against the wall, and Dean looks into Seth’s beautiful dark eyes and blinks away the dust.

“Tell…” and Dean coughs, bent nearly double as he hacks and wheezes. Seth’s hand is on his shoulder, holding him up, and it’s a while before Dean can sit up again. “Tell me I didn’t dream that.”  
  
“You didn’t dream that,” Seth replies, and Dean looks for a sign that he’s lying and finds none. “Something exploded.”  
  
“And that’s where we need to go,” Roman says decisively.  
  
That is a fucking stupid idea, and from the look on his face, Seth thinks the same thing. “Uh, _what?”_  
  
“Depending on how big the explosion is, it might have knocked a hole in the wall,” Roman explains. “As in, a hole we can use to escape.” He stares them both down. “We don’t have a map, we don’t know where the exit is, we don’t know if we could even use the exit and we don’t know where we are in relation to any exits. So this might be our best bet. Unless you two have any ideas?”  
  
They don’t.

  
  
  
It’s a short walk, and they don’t meet anyone else on the way there. It’s a small blessing, given that the air is full of thick, choking dust and smoke that makes Dean cough even more, and there’s debris lying everywhere that they have to take pains to avoid tripping on.  
  
They don’t need a map, though, because Roman was right: the explosion has given them a way to exit. 

Whatever exploded seems to have been partway down a long corridor. Not only has most of said corridor collapsed, but the remains are on fire, and the fire’s spreading to the main building, devouring everything it touches hungrily.

Smoke streams away, both outside and into the complex, and both Dean and Seth turn to Roman for instructions.

“What are you looking at me for?” Roman asks incredulously. “The hole’s right fucking there, let’s _go!_ ”

So they do.  
  
  
  
  
“Holy _fuck,_ ” Seth whispers as they emerge.  
  
As cliché as it sounds, it’s like they’ve emerged from Hell into Heaven: all Dean can see is a sea of grass stretching to the distant hills, the full moon shining down on them in the black velvet sky. 

It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and he falls to his knees a few steps away from the hole, running his hands through the grass like he’s never seen it before.

Seth’s dragging in lungful of fresh air after lungful of fresh air, his face turned into the breeze, and Roman’s staring up at the sky, at the tiny points of silver light punctuating the blackness.

“We’re free,” Dean says, dazed.

“We made it,” Seth agrees.

Roman recovers first. “We’re not done yet.”

Dean looks up into Roman’s gorgeous eyes and nods. Of course they aren’t, that would be too easy.

“Where to?” Seth asks shakily, taking a quick look behind them.

Roman points to the closest hill. “The top should give us a good view. At the very least, it’s far enough away to give us a head start if anyone comes after us.”

The last sentence galvanises Dean, and he manages to pull himself up, though he needs their help to get there.

“Come on,” Roman says again.

 

 

It’s like walking in a dream: the full moon casts its silver light over them, bleaching the grass grey and outlining every shadow. The wind is cold, but it’s a soft breeze, and apart from the wind, there’s virtually no noise except their footsteps.

It’s not as far as it seems from the compound to the hill. It’s not a steep climb to the top, either, though the hill is pretty high. They take the climb slowly, but in this dreamlike state, the walk’s over almost before it’s begun.

Or at least, that’s what it feels like.

The top’s studded with trees, and there’s even a stream running downhill. Dean stumbles toward it like he’s hypnotised, drops to his knees and splashes his face.

The water is icy cold, and it knocks him out of his reverie beautifully.

“Fuck,” he gasps, his fingertips going numb.

He looks up, and he can’t believe what he sees.

The other side of the hill is steep as all fuck, but he doesn’t care, because below him is a city. All he can make out is hundreds- no, thousands- of tiny multicoloured lights, and it’s like he's staring down at Heaven.

 _This is the outside?_ the beast asks dreamily. _It’s… beautiful._

“It’s fucking beautiful,” Dean agrees.

“We’ve got to find a better way down, first,” Roman says, and Dean wants to punch him for ruining the moment with his seriousness, but that can wait. “But that’s where we go next.”

“Oh my _God,_ ” Seth says, and he sounds so stunned that Dean gets up and turns around, only to freeze at the sight.  
  
Far below them lies the compound, and it’s _huge_. Two giant complexes, each identical, joined by a corridor- the one that blew up. Tiny figures are spilling out of the hole, and the reason is obvious: the fire has spread, and Dean can tell that it’s going to engulf the entire thing soon if something isn’t done.  
  
“It’s huge,” Dean says, lacking anything else to say. “I didn’t think it was that huge.”  
  
“Fucking hell,” Seth whispers. “That’s bigger than a football stadium. It’s like two fucking football stadiums put together.”  
  
“Not it,” Roman says heavily. “They.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“That’s not one building in two identical halves,” Roman says, and he sounds like he really doesn’t like what he’s saying. “That’s two identical buildings joined by one corridor.”  
  
Seth turns, his face lighting up with an epiphany. “Holy shit. That’s-”

“The other compound,” Roman completes, nodding.  
  
“What other compound?” Dean asks.  
  
“Something Jean said,” Roman replies. “He said he could only control the doors in our compound, not the other compound.”  
  
Dean has no idea who the fuck Jean is, but he shrugs it off in favour of the more pressing issue. "Wait. If there are two compounds, then who’s in the other one?”

_Can I suggest maybe looking around?_

Dean suddenly has a very, very bad feeling about what’s going to happen next.  
  
“That would be us,” a cold voice says, cutting through the silence like a knife.  
  
The three men turn.

“Oh, _fuck me_ ,” Roman says.

“Jesus Christ,” Seth whispers.

About a hundred metres away, a crumpled figure lies on the banks of the stream, barely moving, appearing almost luminous under the moonlight. Another figure kneels over their friend anxiously, not looking up.

In front of them is an angel.

Well, all right, she’s not an angel in the strictest sense of the word, but Dean’s fucked if he can think of anything else to call her, because she’s inhumanly beautiful and she’s made of fire.

Her hair is changing colour, individual parts going from deepest red to light yellow in seconds. Her skin is a vibrant orange, her eyes coal black. Flames dance over her skin, stream away from her fingers, twine themselves through her hair. She hovers in the air just in front of the unmoving person, offering a silent threat to anyone who dares approach.

She is a monster and a miracle, beautiful and terrifying, hideous and perfect.

Dean stares into the coal-black eyes and sees only rage and wrath and fury, and he smiles, because when it comes to rage, wrath and fury, he wrote the damn book.

Still, there’s one rather urgent question to ask, so he asks it.

"Well, shit,” he says. “What the fuck do we do now?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus concludes let me see the light in your eyes. The sequel, pray for rain, will examine exactly what was happening in the other compound, and will eventually continue our heroes' adventures. Eventually.


End file.
